What you are looking for is already in you

Two Christmas Eves ago, while I was unwrapping presents at my parents’ house, I came across a flat square present addressed to me from my cousin Sam. After carefully tearing away the paper, I saw that it was a plain black picture frame with a single line of texted matted in the center. Upon more careful observation, I saw that the words were actually a quote: “What you are looking for is not out there, it is in you.” The quote was by Helen Keller.  I knew instantly that no other Christmas gift received that year would compare to this humble one, and also, that I would never forget Miss Keller’s words.

“What you are looking for is not out there, it is in you.” It’s a simple quote, but I find myself continually revisiting it and discovering new significance behind it.

One of the first moments I really felt the weight of meaning behind the quote was last August when I attempted a marathon solo bicycle ride from Helena to Lincoln, MT and back again.  It took me over 14 hours to complete the 137 mile journey. From inclement weather and mechanical issues with my bike, to excruciating back and butt pain that never went away, I wondered nearly every mile of my ride whether I would make it.  

Then, when I was about 30 miles away from Helena again, I summited Flesher Pass. It was the second of two major passes I knew I’d have to climb on my trip. The moment I saw the top of Flesher, I knew I would make it. That was also the moment I gained some perspective on what Helen Keller’s quote truly meant.

There have been so many times in my life when I’ve prayed for strength to overcome a challenging time. There have been times where I’ve laid curled in a ball on the floor sobbing because I felt too weak to do anything else. There was a time once that when people told me I couldn’t do something, I believed them. There was a time in high school gym class, where jogging one mile seemed like the hardest thing I’d ever do. And yet, when I pedaled my way over the top of Flesher Pass that day and continued on to complete a 137 mile bike ride, I finally realized that all the things I’d prayed for, all of the qualities I’d sincerely believed I didn’t have in me, all the goals I was often told I was incapable of achieving----I finally realized that all of those assets and qualities to do and be anything and everything I wanted to, were already in me. I had just spent too much time LOOKING for them externally, rather than looking internally where I should have trusted they already were.

While I found new strength and determination inside me on my bike ride, I found a new level of courage inside me a few months ago when my dad convinced me to start playing hockey. At first I thought he was crazy. How could the girl who did ballet for 13 years and never played a team sport in her life play on a hockey team? But he bought me the gear and I hit the ice. I was absolutely petrified during my first game and didn’t have a clue what I was doing. But by the time the buzzer sounded for the end of the third period, I knew that I was in love with the game.

During my second game, while I was waiting for the zamboni to finish resurfacing the ice, I discovered that I had lost my stick amongst the long line of everyone else’s sticks along the wall. Having only really played with it during that first game, I couldn’t honestly remember what it looked like. Thankfully, my dad helped me find the stick just in the nick of time for our game to start. He explained to me that he had the same problem, and showed me how he wrote the letters “TCB” (his signature logo) on the end of his stick handle so he wouldn’t lose it. For those unfamiliar, TCB, standing for Taking Care of Business, was part of Elvis Presley’s famous emblem. I made a mental note to come up with my own logo and put it on my stick later so I wouldn’t misplace it again.  

After a lot of long nights wearing sweaty hockey pads, one miraculous goal, and a lot of encouragement from my dad, I somehow managed to finish my rookie season of hockey. I took on a sport I knew nothing about and could barely play and stuck it out as the only woman on the team. I don’t think anyone was as astonished as I was. When I skated off the ice after that last game, I snuck a quick glance down at my stick handle where I had written the word “FEARLESS” with a black sharpie. I smiled knowing that I didn’t believe that about myself when I stepped onto the ice for that first game, but now I was certain of it.

No matter who you are or how capable or talented you think you might be, there is always a part of us that wishes we were stronger, braver, or more accomplished. But the thing is, all of the things we think we need to become that person, are already inside us. We merely need to tap into them. As my dad reminded me on the night I scored my first hockey goal, even Wayne Gretzky started with a single goal. I kept that in mind during every game I played after as well as the fact that what I was looking for was not out there….but in me. And all I’d really been looking for all my life, but only recently found, was that element of fearlessness that I now know will sustain me through anything.

Having Enough Guts

This past weekend I went and saw the movie “42,” which chronicles the life of Jackie Robinson during his first two years as being the first African-American to play major league baseball. I’ve always been a fan of sports movies, despite the fact that actual sporting events usually bore me to death. They just always seem so inspirational to me, and 42 was no different. In fact, I think it hit home for me even more so than other sports films I’ve seen in the past.

When Robinson entered the major league in 1947, segregation was still widespread and the idea of a black man playing alongside an entirely white team was bound to spur a lot of outrage. But Mr. Branch Rickey, manager and owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, was willing to raise a little hell to see a change for the better take place.   

One of my favorite moments in the film was right in the beginning when Mr. Rickey first brings Robinson into his office and tells him his proposition. Mr. Rickey laid the reality out for Robinson of what life would be like for him should he accept….and it would be far from easy. He explained that when the insults started pouring in, Robison would want to take an eye for an eye. But if he did, he would cause the plan to fail. To this Robinson replied, “You want a player who doesn’t have the guts to fight back?” And Mr. Rickey answered by saying, “No. I want a player who’s got the guts not to fight back.”

While Jackie Robinson battled against the racial barriers of his time, most of us have fought similar battles against the demons in our own lives. There is always someone, somewhere telling you that you can’t do something. There are always blockades along the path towards our dreams. And the thing is, a lot of us will let those things stop us. And we’ll instead assume the role of the victim, blaming our failure to rise to our full potential on things and people outside of ourselves. Or we’ll stoop to the low level of those who want to see us fail, which in turn not only compromises our dreams but our characters as well.

What Jackie Robinson showed the world was that it is in fact possible to enter into a battle where the odds are completely stacked against you, to fight it in your own way and win out without ever having sacrificed a piece of who you are.  But to do so takes an extraordinary amount of guts

The racial tensions in this nation didn’t end the day Jackie Robinson first stepped up to bat in front of a field of white ball players. It didn’t end the day Martin Luther King Jr. made his infamous “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. And it didn’t end the day America elected its first black President. But Mr. Robinson did help spur decades of fighting for the equality of all people. And he showed just how far strong character and well-disciplined guts can take a person.

He demonstrated how to live with a little bit of grace and a little bit of grit.

Being Honest....from the Heart to the Page

Having recently finished reading Steven King’s book, On Writing, I started thinking about the relationship between writers and honesty. King’s book presents an incredibly blunt and uninhibited view on what he knows about being a writer. He offers up the best advice he knows for those aspiring to follow in his footsteps. But what I took away from the book most was the dire and often unfortunate necessity of honesty---not only in how you write but to survive the life of being a writer.

One of the most liberating experiences of my life thus far was in writing my senior honors thesis in college. I made the decision just before starting my senior year that my thesis would be comprised of a collection of poems. What ultimately made this decision liberating was the fact that all of the poems, 20 of them in total, drew from personal experiences and relationships in my own life. And every week, I had to offer up these precious and often painful memories framed in stanza format to my fellow critiquing English majors. Every negative comment struck like a bat to the chest—knocking the wind out of me. You’d think this would’ve deterred me from continuing to write poems based on my life. But it didn’t.

And when it came time to present my final poetry collection at my thesis reading in April, I announced to the world in my abstract, that all of the poems were based on my life. And I knew as soon as people were made aware of that fact, they never looked at me or my poems the same.

I took memorable and life-changing moments from my life, laid them out for the world to see, and was thus liberated through my honesty.

The second most liberating experience of my life—one which spans numerous years, --- has been the choice to practice a practically extinct art form: the handwritten letter. Anyone who knows me fairly well knows that I best express myself through writing….which is good since I’m trying to be a writer. But the reason most people know this about me is because of the handwritten letters I have probably sent them at least a time or two.

My letters are so brutally honest---about my thoughts, feelings, desires, and fears, that they even scare me sometimes. The kind of things I’ve written about in letters to people are the same things all of us think and feel, but hardly any of us actually vocalize----even in letters. For some, writing letters is an escape route from actually having to say those things to the person’s face. For me, it’s simply the best way I know how to say everything.  I used to hold my breath every time I would drop one of my letters in the mailbox…knowing that it may or may not be received well due to the extreme honesty of it. I knew I risked damaging the relationships I have with some of the people I care about the most. But somewhere along the line, I stopped caring. And I kept writing.

Some people think my letters are crazy. Some simply appreciate the fact that I took the time to hand write them. But I’d be willing to bet that every single one of them, on some level, respects the fact that I had the guts to put all of myself out there like that.---to put down in ink every feeling in my heart and then slap a stamp on it as my own personal seal of approval and finality. And the thing is, every person I have ever written an incredibly personal and honest letter to, still talks to me. I’m pretty sure most of them still think I’m crazy and in need of some sort of censoring medication, but they still talk to me. And that’s why I know that if nothing else, they respect the fact that I wrote those letters. They respect it because they know they don’t have the guts to do it themselves.

My letters and my poems taught me how to be honest…not just in writing but in how I live my life. Being honest taught me how to free myself from all the fears and self-doubt plaguing my existence. And being free from those burdens wills me on as a writer and human being each and every day.

Life is so short, and you may only get one opportunity to say something important to that one person you really need to hear it. So say it. Say it to their faces, but if you can’t, say it in a letter. In my opinion, letters are a far more intimate and thorough way of getting the point across anyways.