This Is Not a Placeholder

This is an actual piece. It’s a little after midnight, which makes it technically the day before, and I did a bunch of stuff today that was all awesome. From when and where I woke up to who I had lunch with to driving home to the nap I took to the cookie dough I made to igloo building to writing, I have been very very alive today, and if I am publishing an idea about the idea of the work I’m doing, well, here you go.

Benjamin’s Flow of Traffic?

Yesterday, I described the locals’ view here in Summit County about how the tourists drive, but today I need to speak just for–and of–myself.

I practice flow, I teach flow, I do my best to live in flow. Get me going, and I’ll get all mystical, asserting that the energy we channel in flow is in fact the great universal energy of which we’re all a part. I’ll make grand pronouncements that that energy, in its purest form, is Love.

Put me in traffic, though, and that all goes out the window. In heavy traffic, you won’t hear me say a word about that unicorns-rainbows-and-love shit. In heavy traffic, I want to kill.

One Thought on Living in a Place Dependent on Tourism

I live in the mountains full time now, and we see a relentless influx of tourists coming here to ski. People who live here may bitch about them, but none of us actually hate the tourists. We all recognize that without them and the money they bring, there’d be no economy here at all.

We don’t hate them. We recognize that we need them. But holy shit do we hate the white-knuckle way they drive.

Flow Can Change Your Life

My lesson yesterday was with a 14-year-old girl who’d gotten hurt skiing about three years ago and had unsurprisingly been experiencing deep fear on the mountain ever since. I taught her the centered breath, then brought her attention back to the breath again and again. Her fear lessened, and she said, “Skiing is fun again!”

My lesson today was with a 16-year-old girl who was struggling with some issues in her home life. I taught her the centered breath, brought her attention to the breath again and again, and, in her case, taught her the basics of self-protective energetics–how to expand herself via the breath so as to have more confidence and meet challenges more boldly. At first, she wasn’t sure she could learn to ski, or that she even wanted to, but by the end of the lesson, she said she was having fun. And she had new tools to meet the challenges in her life.

To both of them, I said, “These practices can change your life.”

And they can.