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Hola mis amigos, I’m writing this letter in the cramped back row of a plane I just now boarded in Panama City. It’s just shy of noon, and I began this red-eye string of flights from Phoenix around nine last night. Thanks to melatonin and eye shades, I managed a sweet half night’s sleep on the way down. A two hour flight to Guayaquil, three hour bus ride to Ecuador’s coast, and I’ll be back at the hostel where I spent last December surfing doing it all over again — this time with ten friends flying in from the States! Long strings of overnight flights put me in a particular headspace. I’m relaxed, sandy-eyed, and happily resigned to the back corner of this leisurely boarding plane. I find flying to far away places quite emotional and take the long view on things. It feels like flipping chapters in a life story. I notice myself taking stock and reworking my story a bit, with ironic awareness that the stories I tell myself are just stories, and will be reworked again and again as life happens and I thus see fit. Leaving Phoenix is leaving home, the place I grew up and my immediate family there. We took a long walk and got rained on the night before I left. There was this strong sense of finality, of love alight and expressed because, you know, everyone feels that small, small chance you won’t come back. The unknown always feels like risk. At a real estate photography shoot this week, I was speaking of Ecuador with a client. He said to me, “I’ve always been interested in surfing, but now that I have kids, I just can’t do sharks.” In reality, the odds that we die while driving (as we both did on the way to that photoshoot) are 45,000 times greater than death by shark. But there is perhaps no stronger feeling of risk than bobbing on the surface of the ocean with any odds of a giant, all-teeth fish ramming forth from below to eat you alive in a culture where everyone’s watched the movie Jaws. In the unknown, the risk is often not increased as much as we feel it to be increased. “No one has ever been attacked by a shark in this place,” I said. “Still,” he persisted. As Thoreau’s old adage goes, “a man sits as many risks as he runs.” I love running rather than sitting risk every now and then because the feeling of risk brings all the love, meaning, and gratitude I have into sharp focus. When the day comes to fly far away into the unknown, I find myself singing high praises for all I have at home and wondering if I shouldn’t just stay. With the endless blue of the Pacific passing by out the window now, and the unknown awaiting on the other side of this flight, I profoundly feel and appreciate all the wonderful things there is some small, small chance I have forever left behind. What’s most likely to end us does not lurk in the shadows of the unknown, but stands in plain statistical sight: heart diseases, cancers, strokes, dementias, car accidents etc. These things too can come for us anytime. Among the clockwork of home, routine numbs us to the great things that grace our lives. Every once in a while, by running our risks rather than sitting them, we can see the preciousness of our lives and find profound appreciation for the people, places, and all the gifts of home. May your December be merry! With love and stoke, Ethan P.S. I double-dog dare you to find a quiet place and slowly and deliberately make a concentrated effort at reading the first article below. The wonder and richness this approach and its glimpses bring are truly indescribable.
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