Two Boys, One Mountain

March 21, 2021

_________________________

“C’mon, man,” Matt said to me, twisting me around by one shoulder to face him. “We gotta do this. We can’t chicken out anymore.”

“I know,” I replied, my palms sweating. “You keep saying that, but we’re still standing here.”

We laughed at each other’s fear, yet recognized the other’s desire to overcome this major life hurdle. 

“We won’t ever be Men if we don’t,” Matt said, though neither of us yet knew what being a Man really meant.

Not a Man? 

That wouldn’t do. I already felt wimpy enough. And this was my best friend talking - I knew to take him seriously. 

“I’m tired of this! So are you!” Matt said, still pleading, although he’d already convinced me. “Let’s go - and we can scream the whole time. No one will see. Let’s stop being afraid and just get MAD already!” 

He punctuated his sermon with a scowl that didn’t quite hide his nerves. I screwed on as fierce a look as I could muster and clasped his hand, like Captain America about to go into battle with Iron Man. 

“Yeah. Enough of this. Let’s go kick this thing’s ass.” 

It was time to become Men. Time to face our fear. 

We each took a deep breath, turned together, and stared up at the mountain we’d decided to scale. 

It would be our greatest challenge. And, if we were lucky, our greatest victory. 

We were about to conquer a real mountain….

Space Mountain.

Yeah, the roller coaster at Disneyland. For two boys, it might as well have been Everest. 

We had just finished eighth grade, but even on the doorstep of high school in sunny Southern California, I was STILL terrified of roller coasters. It’s even hard to admit it now, all these years later. Very few of my friends were similarly fearful, and I felt childish and silly and weak by comparison. I usually kept it as secret as I could. But SoCal has roller coasters all over - Six Flags Magic Mountain, Knott’s Berry Farm, and - of course - Disneyland. 

I was scared of every single roller coaster out there. But my Special Terror was Space Mountain, at the Happiest Place on Earth. To me, that one was created by Bizarro Evil Mickey as the entrance to Hell. 

I know - it sounds over the top. But it wasn’t back then. 

So why was I so afraid? What did we do? What are you talking about here, JDK?

The answers start with a tattoo.  

**************

The Eastern Orthodox scholar, David Bentley Hart, wrote a line that leapt off the page when I first read it back in 2014 - “Wisdom is the recovery of innocence at the far end of experience.” While Hart was writing a book about understandings of the word and concept of “God” throughout the world, the line itself is far more about the journey of being human. 

I loved that. But I wasn’t sure exactly why. 

A few years later, the why hit me in a conversation with a close friend of mine. The subject was the Afterlife, and Hart’s line crashed into my mind as I told my friend that at this point in my life I was far less concerned about the Afterlife than I was with the concern of “never truly living.”

And Hart’s line encapsulates, for me, what the course of living looks like - or can and should. 

It sets a fine goal for us all - a “return” to innocence. 

[Editor’s note: If you’re hearing this song right now in your head, I understand. And if you aren’t, it’ll be ear worming its way into your brain once you click that link. You’ve been warned.]

The following year, the quote resurfaced again, this time as part of the dazzling tech at a show by my favorite band of all time (hint: it’s a fairly popular Irish quartet that has the same name as an American Cold War spy plane, and by “fairly popular” I mean they are pretty much popular in every nation on Earth. Good luck.). 

That cinched it - Hart’s line had cemented itself as a cornerstone of my outlook on life. 

And to make sure I never forgot it, I had it tattooed on my chest. 

I’m not lying. 

It’s part of a design, so it’s not just stamped across my entire torso or anything - and yes, it IS Cool AF. Thank you for asking. 

That line - one line - helped me find some renewed hope and direction in the aftermath of an era of many mistakes and failures, a refocusing that could help me truly move past those things and, in fact, make them a part of my new era. 

A new era that required the old one as a midwife for its birth.  

Instead of destroying my past innocence for good, I could find a new version, one unique to my own path and - ahem - experiences.

Everyone gets the same opportunity, because we all came into this world fully innocent: unblemished, pure, uncorrupted and blameless. Hart suggests we can recover that in our lives despite the One Undeniable Fact implicit in his words:

We each, inevitably at some point(s), lose our Innocence. 

It can happen spectacularly, or slowly wear us down until we are on our backs, wounded and confused about how we got there. 

Yet, Hart says, we can return to (or discover) Innocence through those same experiences. And, in fact, doing so is Wisdom. 

If that sounds strange, think of what that itself suggests. 

It flies in the face of current popular belief. Somewhere along the line, optimism came to be associated with naivete and childishness, and cynicism with “being realistic” and as an indicator of wisdom. When did that happen exactly? We fight to preserve the innocence of our children for as long as possible, then denigrate any innocence they hold onto as adults as “out of touch” or “pollyannaish” or “simplistic.” And no one knows where that dividing line lies or why it’s there in the first place. 

Things got turned upside down - whereas experience is positive yet painful,  and innocence is negative yet something we long for. We bounce back and forth, move up and down, from the impact of experience vs. the protection of innocence, lamenting both even as we seek out forms of both endlessly. It’s like riding an seesaw - moving, but not really going anywhere. 

But what if Hart is right - that the journey away from Innocence should bring us back to it in the end, built entirely on whatever experiences took it away from us in the first place?

That means that life is not just about survival, but more about resilience - working through experience with purpose far beyond just surviving. To grow into something new. Or, alternatively, to discover what was really inside us all along. 

My own life bears this out, and yours does - or can - as well. And he better be right - I tattooed his words on me, and it kinda hurt. 

Our experiences and all that comes with them - pain, cynicism, exhaustion, confusion, etc. - need not rob us of the simplicity, beauty, and joy that we associate with innocence. In fact, the process can take us to a whole new level of innocence - newfound perspective, peace, accomplishment, serenity, purpose, and possibility. 

It’s all up and down, back and forth, and side to side, to be sure. 

Our journey between Innocence and Experience and back again is a roller coaster, not a seesaw. And the experience is the required passage. 

Just like Matt and I conquering Space Mountain. 

*************

Matt and I hopped up and down nervously as we worked our way through the line. The further into the innards of the mountain we went, the more our various emotions assaulted us. Fortunately, we laughed through our terror. 

So why were we so terrified of this particular roller coaster? 

Take a moment before continuing and see if you can guess. 

Go ahead, I’ll get another cup of coffee while you think it over….

….[sip]

So did you figure it out?

Space Mountain doesn’t go upside down at all (though I feared those too, and BTW the one at Disneyland Paris DOES!), and it’s not mentioned as one of the classic “scary” roller coasters in SoCal by Any Pre-Teen And Above Ever. 

Matt and I found it terrifying for one simple reason:

It’s entirely IN THE DARK. Inside! You can’t see where you’re going! At all!! 

That, more than anything else, filled us both with terror. 

We couldn’t see what was coming. We wanted to ride the ride, but wanted to see what was coming. We wanted to see when to be scared, when to lean right or left, when to brace for a crazy drop. 

To control and contain our fears. 

Get it now? 

Space Mountain encapsulated our fears about the rides of life - we couldn’t see what was coming. 

It was all in the dark. 

And since it was dark and we couldn’t see anything to control, we did all we could to just avoid the ride. 

I hated that I avoided it. I knew my fear was keeping me stuck, even as I ran from it. 

But just as Matt and I learned, we could only run for so long until the fear of NOT riding the ride outweighed our fear of climbing aboard. 

That night, when we reached the head of the line, the park was a mere ninety minutes from closing. We climbed aboard with the few people left in line, sitting right in the front. As the carriage disappeared into the dark, we laughed and put an arm around each other for support. We gritted our teeth as we reached the top of the main incline. We tipped and then….

We had the time of our lives. 

Oh, we were terrified, yet it was fun beyond words. We’d never had the two exist together at the same time. 

It was an absolute blast. We couldn’t see a thing, but loved the rush of it all. We surrendered to the ride, held our hands up because that’s all we could do, and reveled in the experience of conquering one of our most long-standing fears together. 

Quite the metaphor, isn’t it? 

When the ride ended, we were so exhilarated and felt like we’d just gone William Wallace on the English. So much so, in fact, that we rode again. Since the line was super short, it didn’t take long. 

We loved it just as much the second time. 

And the third. And fourth. And fifth. And sixth. And seventh. And eighth. And ninth. 

Nine times in a row.

Somewhere, David Bentley Hart nods.

We walked out of that mountain as different people - with a new understanding of joy, accomplishment, strength, and the power of Each Other. We were more Men than we were before, but not how either of us expected. 

We had faced our fear AND had embraced the joy of our innocence. 

All at the same time. 

And we couldn’t have gotten there without that experience in the dark. 

**********

It would be easy to leave off at “Life is a roller coaster, so ride it.” The movie Parenthood hit that point well years ago. 

It’s still true, but not all roller coasters are alike, of course. The same is true of the roller coasters in life. Matt and I intentionally chose that dark experience. Life doesn’t always allow for that. Instead, life can make us ride in the dark against our will, out of nowhere and without clear reason. 

The death of a loved one. A sudden loss of a job or a relationship. Being the sudden victim of a crime or accident or a new deadly virus. 

When those happen, we have no choice but to ride - unless we jump off, but that defeats the purpose of the ride and discovering what might be on the other end. And jumping only puts other people on their own painful ride without any warning - it passes on the agony. 

For me, choosing to ride the literal Space Mountain showed me that I could ride ANY roller coaster. No matter my fear of it, the ride only lasts for so long. And when it’s over, I can choose the meaning behind the experience. 

Do I resent it? Never speak of it again? Try to find meaning in it? Ride again? Design my own ride? Laugh at it? Find strength from it? Cower from every ride everywhere else? 

The choices are many, and I get to make them. More rides - chosen or not - are simply research and development. 

Riding life’s roller coasters may shatter our Innocence at the start, but those experiences can nevertheless show us what we need to build an even better Innocence on the other side. Like Japanese Kitsugi pottery, where gold is used to put shards of a bowl or cup back together and makes the new piece even stronger -and more beautiful - as a result. So are we as human souls - no matter what might have shattered our innocence at the start, there is gold available to us. 

Whatever the case, whatever the ride, whether in the dark or out of the blue, it could turn out better than our fears want us to believe. It often does. The gifts become clearer once the ride is over. 

Matt and I found that particular enlightenment at the top of Space Mountain. 

May you find your Space Mountain, whatever it may be. It’s time to ride. 

You already know what it is, don’t you?

Don’t let the darkness hinder you - it's a helluva ride. Time it right, and you’ll hear me and Matt whooping it up somewhere in there. 

Chins Up, Everyone. 

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Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday

Book On My Nightstand: Fighting for Space: Two Pilots and Their Battle for Female Spaceflight by Amy Shira Teitel

Best Show / Movie I Watched: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Episode One. ‘Nuff said.

Strongest Earworm Song: “So Whatcha Want” by Beastie Boys

Longest Walk / Run of the Week: 5.34 mile walk / 14 mile ride (Thursday)

Favorite Hangout T-Shirt of the Week: This one. Because baseball. In Japan.

Coolest Thing of the Week: Receiving $210 I’d totally forgotten was coming.

Thing I Now Know That I Didn’t Last Week: That Febreze really does work - on anything

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “We are not robots. We are all ninjas.”

Current Wanderlust List: 1) A California beach 2) Glacier National Park 3) A Japanese baseball game