June 14, 2024

Perspective

It was 4:30 on Friday morning when the alarm went off. We had our customary cup of coffee and then my wife got ready for a drive into Durham. This morning, she had a practical exam at her university, and she would be back early in the afternoon. After she left, I sat down at my desk and knocked out a writing session before heading into the woods.

It was hard to view Fridays like they were a regular weekday. The walks through the forest definitely felt lighter and seemed more positive on the last day of the workweek. This morning the sun was out, but the forest still felt comfortable. I heard a few birds chirping in the distance, but the woods were mostly silent.

At the marsh by the creek, while listening to the sounds of the water flowing, I heard a deer bark seven times. I caught a glimpse of two deer running behind the trees, but they never came out into the open. In the distance I heard two or three pileated woodpeckers, the sound of their thumps trailing off as they pecked away at the trees.

Yesterday, I had a close encounter with a deer in the forest. This morning, as I made my way to the area where I saw the deer, I slowed my pace, walking as quietly as possible. I readied my camera, but when I arrived at the bend in the trail, I saw nothing. At that same moment, I heard a deer bark, seeing a lone doe moving south into the pine grove, just inside the tree line. I followed, but never saw her again.

I exited the woods in good spirits, ready for a Friday at work. After showering, I got dressed and then readied myself for some early morning meetings. At around eleven o’clock in the morning, my wife was pulling down the dirt road, and the dogs and I felt thrilled to see her.

When lunch time rolled around, we left the house to go eat in Wilson. It was nice getting a little face time with her during the middle of a workday. I was happy the restaurant had an app where I could pay for our meal on my phone. That helped us avoid a long line of people waiting to pay. When we arrived back home, I got back to work while my wife busied herself around the house, until she was so tired, she lied down to take a nap.

After work, I sat down at the dining room table with my wife. I could tell something was bothering her, and we talked. She expressed her disappointment at her performance during her practical exam. We talked about the effects of two years of daily pressure in her schooling program. She had gone to school and studied for ten to twelve hours per day for the past twenty-three months. I assured her this kind of pace would negatively affect anyone.

While we started talking about her specific experience, the conversation was really about the tough times we all experienced in life. Sometimes, it was easy to forget that learning was an objective practice of acquiring skills and implementing information. We all felt bad whenever we fell short of a personal goal.

If we never erred, we would never learn. While most people wanted to avoid making mistakes, no high performing person ever progressed without repeatedly slamming into walls. In my experience, the ability to embrace failures as stepping stones separated the amateurs from the pros.

The sense of failure felt ugly, bad enough to avoid it at all costs. This discomfort, however, was the pathway to the very things we wanted in life. Professionals were just people who became comfortable being uncomfortable. That discomfort, the thing most people avoided, was a great opportunity. Failure gave us real world feedback. And if we were smart and stubborn enough, we could take action to strengthen the weaknesses that were exposed.

At last light, I went for my evening walk into the woods. It was 90 degrees outside, and the sky was still bright. In the forest's shade, however, it didn’t feel too bad. I took my time, stopping at various locations to shoot a few photographs.

While walking, I admired how different the light looked between my morning and evening time in the forest. In the mornings, the light cut from east to west, but in the evening the directions were reversed, giving the woods a distinct look. Because I was always chasing pockets of light in the forest, the shots I took changed with the specific weather and time of day. Daily, I was shooting different subjects in different locations from different perspectives. This kept my walks fresh and my desire to take photographs filled with anticipation and intent.

I saw two deer near the creek, but they were gone before I could get any clean shots. As I made my way back toward the house, I remembered when my martial arts teacher in Japan told me that our enemy was our greatest teacher. After the conversation with my wife today and talking about the unpleasantness and necessity of making mistakes, I understood my teacher’s lesson on a deeper level.

Our enemy was always searching for our weaknesses, and they freely provided instant feedback on what those inefficiencies were. That the enemy provided us with this invaluable information made them the best teacher we could ever encounter. The secret to learning was finding a flaw, accepting it, and then training it out of ourselves. If we went through life doing this, then over time, we would improve our skills. Finding our flaws was an important first step toward improvement.

Many people avoided engaging with life to avoid the negative feeling associated with having a weakness exposed. They lived in a world of make believe while those who pushed themselves and failed earned small pieces of truth they could use to build themselves into a professional. As I walked out of the woods and back toward my house, I vowed to search out my own weaknesses and forge them out of my character.

I sat down with my wife, who was on the outdoor couch under the pergola. She was watching a fern that had almost died over the winter while living in our house. Now outdoors for a month, the plant had regained its strength and formed an ecosystem of life once again. My wife showed me a tiny spider she was making friends with. The little arachnid had a black and yellow striped torso that made it look like a bee. It was so small I could have fit three or four of them on my pinky fingernail. A baby praying mantis, about a quarter of an inch long, stared at my wife, dancing in a rhythmic trance.