Just be faster than the water

In the summer between my later years of high school, our family did a paddling trip down a river near Gatlinburg, TN. (I tried to figure out which one, but looking back at metadata from scans of photos proves useless in geolocation.) Me, my brothers, and parents had a handful of kayaks, and we were with our friends John and Gina who each had a canoe of their own. The kind you knelt in and wore a helmet for. They were for real.

The river was dam-controlled, and this was a moderate time of year in terms of volume. There were enough parts of the river with rapids, boulders, lips, and ledges that it kept us on our toes. A number of sections were not very chill.

One of the challenges I found early on was moving laterally across the river. When something ahead like a fallen tree loomed in your path you didn’t want it to capsize or clothesline you. But cutting across the flow to get out of its way was tough. All of a sudden, you could feel how much you’re at the mercy of nature.

At one point a few of us were a little frustrated with aforementioned capsizing and had frayed nerves as a result. While we hydrated and took a lunch break on shore, John explained the significance of moving faster than the river. That was key to cutting laterally and controlling your direction effectively. To us, it felt scary because speed equated to lack of control (in our minds). This was a respectable river for a family that didn’t live near one and spend a lot of time traversing. Faster felt dangerous and uncomfortable.

But what he explained was that in order to stick your paddle into the water and steer is dependent on there being resistance against it. When going upriver, it’s a non-issue. Your entire effort is against the flow. Going downstream though, if you stick an oar in water going the same speed, nothing happens. You’re rudderless. The river will carry you like a drifting leaf. To go any direction but straight ahead requires extra effort and torque to move water and create propulsion.

And sure enough, the rest of the day we spent more time getting comfortable with speed because it was necessary. Once you built up to the speed of the water next to you, it was easier to create forward momentum. And that forward momentum then allowed me to quickly dip the paddle in on my side to glide the whole kayak across the current as needed. Proactively - not reactively.

I realize the irony in writing this post about speed where my first was about slowness. But if I’m being honest, I think this one's just as much about fear. It’s easy to be surrounded by a natural force of nature and power and feel vulnerable. To realize how much it can truly be in charge of your direction and fate.

It can be paralyzing. The overwhelm of seeing it right there all around brings an inherent sense of helplessness. Why would I want to go faster!? Surely it’s easier to just go with the flow because… water knows best? I don’t need to go fast. I’ll just scramble like hell to get out of the way in time whenever an obstacle is imminent.

I have been thinking about this constantly. Here we are 25-30 years later, and as life sweeps us into daily obstacles and danger I find my first thought often being “how do get to be faster than the water?”

Wow is it tough right now. The times when we finally build up some speed are quickly torpedoed by looking around and panicking: Crap am I going too fast? Am I doing this right? Nobody told me this is ok.

Now that the stakes are higher than ever, I’m increasingly drawn back to this concept. I realize it plays out constantly around me. There are people flying by, able to whip around rocks and rafts with ease because they have so much speed built up. There are others in constant effort paddling move sideways. Others hitting trees and rocks and falling in. Life is picking up speed and volume and it seems like the baseline velocity required to have any sense of control is increasing daily.

This routine of waking up and immediate trying to decide left or right? go go go! isn't working. But the reason it keeps coming is because we’re too scared of building up the speed to be in control. We spend our time and energy reacting and avoiding—and end up being all the more fearful as a result.

So how do you do it? How do I do it? How do we wake up each day to an existing momentum that moves us fast enough we can easily navigate obstacles and control our outcome?

One way is by surrounding ourselves with others who are in a similar place. I mentioned how new people I've started following over the past month as a result of my story. One of them appeared in my inbox this morning—someone else building something entirely new and being vulnerable enough to talk about it and invite people into it. Within it, she said "... my advice to you, is to pick one thing — and move." Aside from the simple practicality of it, there's also the encouraging realization that I'm not alone and there are a lot of us on this trek together. She’s going to be one of the first I reach out to as I launch this project.

One last lesson from the river before I wrap this up. It was another counterintuitive reality that was hard to grasp in the moment. If you found yourself pinned or hung up on a rock or obstacle, it was very important to lean downstream and let the current hit the side/bottom of your craft. It never felt right or safe—the instinct is to lean upstream, as if there's some security in it. The unfortunate reality is that you open the cockpit to the oncoming current and if it catches, your sunk immediately. The only way to avoid this is to fully commit downstream with every movement.

Happy paddling fellow traveler-

Until next time,

Justin

I think we’re going to see a larger collapse of major social networks in the coming years with a migration to smaller, more intentional spaces. I’ve joined a few of them and one I’ve been particularly enjoying is Ness Labs by Anne-Laure Le Cunff, PhD. If you’re interested in trying out one of communities, give this one a look! I’m joining a hosted workshop in an hour called “Making Peace with Unfinished Work” 🪦