SHAWN PURVIS

Big Wave Discipline

12/6/2013

This is my contribution to Article Challenge, Day Two! (for more info about the Article Challenge, please see the Facebook Event here)

To hear me read this blog, click here

Life is a balance between sensation and discipline.

When we are feeling it, the world becomes possible and we are 'divine shapers of the cosmos' (a great concept I learned from Ask Teal). When our feeling fails,however, the world seems impossible and we are simply bottles tossed around by the whims of the ocean. One may make us happy and one may make us sad, but realize that both of these perspectives are needed to see the beauty of life.

Without feeling powerless, we would never feel powerful.

The sensation of being powerful is that moment when the waves carry us like the Big Kahuna surfer we are. We've struggled. We've judged. We've dared to select the best wave we see and that wave carries us with enthusiasm and sheer ecstasy.

Then the wave crashes. All of the momentum now becomes a different force indeed. The very water that carried us like royalty now threatens to suck our bodies into the ocean and drown us in a watery grave.

We have fallen. We have failed. We have become broken. And yet it needs to occur. The water must replenish itself. Without undertow, there is no wave. Without wave, there is no undertow. The very force that carried us will now carry itself back to the place where new waves are born.

This is where discipline lives. In the valleys between waves. In the sobbing tears between raucous guffaws. Discipline is the other side of things.

What if we could harness one to offset the other? When you are feeling the power of the wave, quickly shift to discipline while the sensation is still coursing through your veins. Jot down goals and dates while your heart is pounding. Use the momentum to prepare for the undertow.

What if we could harness the powerlessness of failure into the next grand adventure? (As I type this, I realize that this is my lesson for today)

If we see the waves fall, can we not induce that undertow will rise? Yesterday was a good day. Today? Not so much. Yet I knew yesterday that I was up and that I would fall. Why do I have difficulty trusting that tomorrow will rise?

We are creatures based on survival. We like to survive. We like everyone to survive. It's one of the reasons why suicide is illegal. Death is bad. The undertow must be warred upon. Life is all the matters.

Or is it? I remember a comic book from Marvel when the Beyonder ended Death and in doing so, ended the cycle of life. We could not eat food for no animal or vegetable would die. Everything alive would be cursed to suffer forever.

This is also why Vampires are so grumpy.

Life is not a constant. It is finite. The soul and spirit may continue on, but the sack of meat holding the spirit dies a little each day until the day it recycles into the rest of everything. In order for life to be, death must be. So it also in success and failure. So it is with sensation and discipline.

Trust that one leads to another and back again. If you're on the wave, spread the joy as far and as wide as you can. Get out your pompoms and scream your victory cry! If you're in the undertow, let it go. Be quiet and still and focus on the next wave.

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The Toastmaster Meeting That Wasn't

8/13/2013

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I have been preparing for the championship speech contest for months now. Every chance I get, I get in front of people and practice in hopes that I can cram a lifetime of finesse into the span of a season. To this end, I visited a local meeting I found online and brought my friend Robyn along to listen.

We arrived in a room that was lit and held two eager women ready for Toastmasters. The only thing missing was the club. No one showed up. No banner. No ballot. No gavel. Not a single Toastmaster from the club! I was certain that this would be a trip in vain.

Suddenly, something magical occurred.

In sitting and waiting, my friend and I began to tell these two women about Toastmasters and what they would experience if the club were there. Walking through each role and each opportunity until Robyn turns to me and says. "do your speech."

'For three people?' I thought. When I've spoken to hundreds, how can three people provide an audience?

I shrugged. Might as well.

I walked to the car for my jacket and props. When I walked back to the room, two strangers and a friend listened to me give my speech.

As I spoke, their eyes lit up. They laughed. They cried. One even bowed her head on the table to hide her tears.

It was perhaps the finest moment in my speaking history.

Damnable ego.

It reminded me of the Seuss book where the Grinch steals Christmas. Or at least tries to steal Christmas. Instead, he winds up stealing everything tangible thing, but cannot steal the spirit of the moment.

That is what I learned tonight. Toastmasters is not about ribbons or ballots or gavels, it is about the spirit of communication and sharing that spirit with everyone you meet.

After I spoke, everyone else got up and tried out table topics. I even timed it on my phone.

It was one of the best meetings I've ever attended.

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'Sunday Morning Coming Down'

7/20/2013

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I never quite understood why musicians and actors would overdose on drugs so often. I thought it might be part of the lifestyle. Part of the partying lifestyle where you simply do all the terrible things that you’re told not to because you are a rebel. I mean, when you have all the riches and fame, why would you need to abuse drugs? If your life was so wonderful, why would you want to escape it?

I had never heard the reason so clearly until I picked up a Johnny Cash compilation CD a while back and started rocking out to the standards. I kept skipping this one track because it was old and the audio was grainy like an old movie with scratches on the celluloid. Over and over and over, I would play “Folsom Prison Blues” and the cover of Trent Reznor’s ‘Hurt.’ Even the Hghwayman was a great find with guest musicians like Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson.

One day, I was driving and simply let the CD play. It came to a song called Sunday Morning Sidewalk. It had an old country bounce to it with a dry guitar and clean mic.

“I woke up Sunday morning, with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt”

The line took me back to one of my favorite bands, Stabbing Westward, with their lyric,“Six o’clock in the morning, my head is ready to explode.” It enticed me, so I listened on and each line became a clearer picture of a man who was utterly and hopelessly alone. Not that he didn’t have any friends or family, but that once you stand on stage and feel the roar of the crowd, it is hard to come down on Sunday morning.

I never quite got it until I played four shows on the three consecutive nights and then hit Sunday morning like a brick wall. I was fiending for a hit. A laugh. An ounce of attention where someone would look at me with a hundred eyes so I could feel that special again.

That’s where drugs come in. They play a second fiddle to the greatest high I have ever known. Joyous attention. When people look at you and laugh and applaud and stand to their feet, you become a titan among humans. You become a god.

Then the quiet sets in and it cuts through you like a shaky surgeon with a dull blade. The crowds have left. The attention fades into distraction. The god becomes a mortal once again.

“On a Sunday morning sidewalk

Wishing Lord that I was stoned”

Johnny knew it. He had crawled his way out of a regular life to be placed upon a pedestal of admiration and praise and every time the crowds waned, the column would crack. Each time the house lights came on and he went to his tour bus, it stung him deep.

“Cause there’s something in a Sunday

That makes a body feel alone”

It amazes me that for all of our shyness and avoidance, once we catch the fever of performance, it becomes a beast unto itself. We treat celebrities like they’re a different species of beings. Like they’re some sort of angels mingling among the people. Yet, when a person becomes an angel, it is simply perception. If you are not worthwhile without attention, you will never be worthwhile with attention.

My mentor, Joseph, would always say, “buy a pillow, cause it’s lonely at the top.” He was right. No matter how many people surround you, once you’ve been exposed to the storm of attention, you become ostracized from most people and they treat you like you are made of something else entirely. It’s not real though.

It is the phenomenon of attention. It’s the rush of a throng of people investing their greatest asset into you: their time. Few things are as precious and when you are standing in front of a crowd paying you so much time, you become giddy and elated and high on life. Few things compare to it. That’s why it hurts so bad when it goes away.

It is the valley on the other side of the mountain. It is the down to the up. It is the tear to the smile and though it is harsh, it truly becomes the reason that the other feels so good. Which is strange to realize, but if performers would simply own their dark days, then their light days would seem brighter. If we all would own our dark days, we would find sunlight all the brighter. As the adage goes, ‘the night is darkest just before dawn.’

I understand why so many actors and musicians abuse so many drugs. I have used them myself, but every so often, you have to muddle through the grey days and stop chasing sunlight. You even have to stop pretending you have sunlight. We simply have to trust that the sunlight is on the other side of that cloud and when it pokes through again, it will be even more brilliant than before.

Own the dark days. Own them like Cash did.

“And there’s nothing short of dying

That comes closer to the sound

Of a Sunday morning sidewalk

With Sunday morning coming down.”

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Big Wave Discipline

The Toastmaster Meeting That Wasn't

'Sunday Morning Coming Down'

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