Monday, April 6, 2009

This I believe

Today, just before 5 p.m. eastern, National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" aired the last "This I Believe" essay. These short statements of belief, written by people from all walks of life, were a revival of a radio project started in the
1950s by broadcasting icon, Edward R. Murrow.

I've not written an essay for NPR, but listening to Muhammad Ali's essay, "I am still the greatest" written and voiced with help from his wife, I started to think with clarity about what I believe.

Even on a cold and colorless windy day in the Upper Peninsula, I sing out with no hesitation that in my core I believe, "Everything gets better when you get outside."

As a skier, kayaker and biker, it's easy to see how fun happens when you are off the couch and out of the house. But it's not just for recreation that I made this statement. It's also for the soul searching we all seem to hunger.

What would happen if all of us, at every stage of our life, felt more fresh air? Not just on our face but in our spirit too; we just opened the windows for a good wind swept cleaning?

Would life change if we took our troubles to the trees and with all the gum our emotions could muster we packed them into a tight ball--weighted with the crush of collected negative--and then threw that wad high up in the branches? High enough that it would catch in the leaves and stay there to be melt by the sun and rain, ripped by the wind and pecked by the birds, never to fall on our heads or hearts again.

Or better yet, we stuffed a backpack, overflowing with worries, heavy and lumpy with guilt and doubt and then climbed the highest peak, looked toward and sun and set the whole load sailing. At first it would float high, a good tossing weight, but then the burden would sink and thud hard on impact. We could watch it, momentum still racing, and it would tumble deep into a ravine, buried in snow and scree, never to be retrieved.

Lake Superior, my wide angle view on life, has even better promise for helping me understand the power of "outside."

So many times I've sat on this Big Blue's lake shore trying to make sense of people and places I've come to in life. What's a teaspoon of my struggle to a 10,000 year old lake, the largest, coldest and deepest of the planet's Great Lakes? Today it's roiling with forces that even a thousand foot freighter, crammed with iron ore, wouldn't take on in a match for survival.

So I'm confident when I say, "Everything gets better when you get outside." It's where we've been looking for answers since time began. And this I believe.

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