We've Been Here FOREVER…It’s Been over A Year Already?

As I climbed the rope ladder, making sure my harness didn’t get tangled on my way up, I got a better glimpse over the trees, across the rocky ravine with the snaking creek below, to the tower on the other side. 250 meters (273.403 yards) away. Holding on to the ladder with one hand, I unhooked my carabiner from one safety lock and secured it to the next one as I started shimmying across the cable near my feet, holding on to the another cord above my head, making my way to the jumping platform.

“If you’re going to wait to zip line until you’re 36, you could do a lot worst for your first ride. Might as well zip along with the Alps in the background,” I thought to myself. “Try not to take the view for granted after you jump.”

I’ve seen other people zip line before, and I’m pretty sure there’s always been someone there at the launchpad, an employee ensuring someone didn’t get too excited and forget to clasp everything together correctly. But hey, they do like their self-reliance here in Switzerland. I checked to make sure I had everything hooked up properly. Hook over the zip line. Check. One carabiner locked in on top, and the other riding along for good measure. Check. Everything untangled and ready to go. Yup, that’s how they taught us when we got here. If all these other people jumped on their own, day after day, there’s nothing unsafe about this. They wouldn’t be open if this wasn’t fun. They wouldn’t stay open if people could accidentally forget how to clip in and occasionally turned this zip line into a sky dive, either. I looked across to the other tower and saw a couple of specks who were my buddies unhook their harnesses from the line. I took in the view one last time—the forest, the trees, the mountains, the little villages and farmland—leaned back, took a deep breath, and jumped.

What percentage of people actually yell, “WHEEEEE!” when they jump? Maybe more than I’d guess. I heard someone yelling and chuckled in my head at that goober, until I realized that it was me screaming like Nash on a slide at the school playground. I may be spending too much time around playgrounds and slides these days. Come on, you know what I mean.

Anyway, the view was incredible; it’s exhilarating zipping way up high with a view below and in front of you. I wasn’t regretting the ride. I was wondering why I hadn’t done this before.

Eventually I slowed down and came to a stop before the landing platform. No big deal, they said this could happen. I was supposed to crawl backwards hand over hand hand while hanging upside down until I got to the end. Which felt like this was my own personal Mission Impossible moment. It also felt like Harry and Marv trying to make it to Kevin’s treehouse.

Don’t think those thoughts though, in the moment. Because, like me, your own inner Harry or Marv might just be prodded awake by the comparison. And then, like me, your hands might slip off the line. Then your momentum slows and reverses, starting to pull you back out away from the tower, slowing gaining speed as you zip backwards towards the middle of the line…

…and that’s how I found myself dangling from the middle of the zip line without any zip left.

I was impressed during the wait. “Try not to take the view for granted…” echoed inside my head. So I was impressed as I did look around, across, and even upside down…all the way down to the creek below. Probably not many have had the time to really live in the moment and appreciate this view, allow it to sink in, like I did. But it’s also tempting to close your eyes and pray a little bit while you’re hanging around waiting on someone to come help.

I was impressed by the strength of the hook and carabiner and harness.

I was impressed by the real secret agent-like employee who hooked herself up and scaled all the way out hook me up to another cable that helped tow us back to the platform.

and I was impressed that my shorts stayed clean and my knees didn’t wobble or melt completely when my feet finally reached the wooden slats of the tower platform.

I still wonder sometimes if I would have gone to the adventure park with the ropes courses and zip lines if I knew that I’d end up being the knucklehead swinging in the breeze that day. I think I would have. At least, I hope I would have. But fear is tricky. It wraps me up and holds me back more often that I’d like to admit. It usually beckons forth the worst in me, instead of the best.

It makes me want to take a stand in defense of ignorance, though. What we didn’t know back then, would it change what we ending up choosing if we did? Because as scary as the unknown can so often be, hope and possibility also live out there and give me courage and strength I might lack otherwise. It pushed me farther than I expected on the ropes course and zip line that day. And that ignorance helped us all choose to pick up over there and plop down over here 13 months ago.

I can’t believe it’s been that long.

If I’d known how much letting go I’d do over here in the first year, I might have been scared off. Or if I’d known how much patience I’d need, or learning I’d face, I might have pumped the brakes a little bit. Most of us would value figuring out how to let go, growing their patience, and continuing their learning, I reckon. But valuing them and actually being forced to work on them are two different things. I want the rewards, not really the accompanying work.

While we figure out this chapter together as a family, it’s energizing being settled enough after a year to lean into the positives of the new normal. It’s in the low 60’s today, which for me is a beautiful September day. There are so many things to do outside, to explore and experience and see. If you didn’t stop to appreciate the view in so many different places here, you’d really be going out of your way to stay distracted. We almost don’t have a choice but to live in the moment and try and take it all in. It’s amazing how living with a little less actually frees us up, too. We’re finding who we’ve been up to this point doesn’t have to determine who we’re going to be. And actually, who we’re going to be isn’t even as important as who we’re being and becoming here and now.

I was listening to a podcast a while ago and the host, Bart Campolo, was gushing about how much he loves Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast. On the podcast, Gladwell looks back at historical events with fantastic and well-researched context, with the ability to tell engaging stories, and with a little bit of a scientific theory on how memory often isn’t quite as sharp as we think it is (to be fair, maybe I’m already in the bag on this one. It’s one of my favorite podcasts too). Campolo simply but compellingly described why he’s so intrigued by Revisionist History. Slightly paraphrasing, probably, I remember him saying how exhilarating it is to have your mind changed.

In an age of extremism, partisanship, and pundits, when fear again pushes us—pushes me—to the comforts of black and white views on many issues, I’m immensely grateful for Campolo’s naming of and appreciation for this value that seems counter-cultural today. It is exhilarating to have your mind changed, because it rewards our curiosity and stokes our humility. We’re opened up to more opportunities to learn. Having our minds changed tends the soil and waters the seeds of understanding and compassion, so that people become more valuable than my own stances or identities. So that walking each other home—enduring together with people from different places and stories, different experiences, joys, and pains—ultimately helps us live better than always prioritizing being right.

Our last 13 months in a new country with new culture and roles and jobs and schools and norms and people and opportunities and frustrations and beauty and everything else has been exhilarating because our minds, our lives, have been opened up and changed. We used to talk often about how much longer we’ll be here. Can we just plan backwards? What’s next for you, for me, career-wise? The boys even pick up on it. They’ve learned to add a little hopeful optimism to grand requests for things like swimming pools and pets and mixers for the kitchen so we can bake more by prefacing any big ask with, “Hey, when we move back to Texas can we get…?”

And while we love and cherish the people we miss (along with the food and prices and clear and simple road signs which mark wide roads where you don’t have to suck in to squeeze down a street or into a parking space), we’re trying to model for them the importance of loosening our grip on all the plans we have for someday down the road. We’re working on fully unwrapping the gift of not-knowing, acknowledging the power of ignorance at times.

I heard an interview with Rabbi Nahum Ward-Lev where he was talking about the places where we can find the most life and vitality in our day-in-day-out rhythms and ruts. His advice was simple and challenging and is still working on me. He said it’s in the losing, the failing, the letting go. For when we let go, when we lose, we’re given the grace of humility. And through humility, we rediscover the grace of listening and learning. And life gets richer. And we lean on each other more. There’s a dynamism there, Rabbi Nahum says. Amen. Let it be so.

I’m grateful for a wife and two boys who don’t take themselves too seriously. Who are willing to loosen their grip, go with the flow, and try something new. I’m not sure when I’ll zip line again, but I’m grateful I didn’t know what would happen, and that I was able to enjoy the ride and the view when I loosened my grip on what I can control and tried something new.

Except don’t ever actually loosen your grip on the actual zip line itself. Humbly, I’ll have to insist that whatever you do, hold on for dear life. Leave the dangling and screaming to Harry and Marv.