Walt Hampton, J.D.

Creating the Work & Life You LOVE

Shadows on the Ridge
July 22, 2010

And in the midst of the garden stood the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

— Genesis 2:9

It was minus 20 and my fingers ached from the cold.

I glanced up at the ridge.  The shadow was still deep. It would be another hour, at least, before the sun pulled around and began to warm the air.

The pack repair I was working on was going poorly. The thin air and low light challenged my patience.

I shut my eyes to refocus.  I longed for warmth.  In a momentary dream, I imagined myself transported from the arctic winter, working in my back yard, in my shorts and tee shirt, the summer sun beating down on me, the sweat pouring off me.  And I smiled.

When I opened my eyes, my fingers were so cold that I wondered if I could ever rewarm them.

A mere three weeks later, I was in my back yard.  The temperature 110 degrees hotter than it had been on that morning in the Genet Basin.  The sweat poured off of me. I was miserably hot. I closed my eyes and pictured myself walking along the Kahiltna again, the wind driving against my face.  And I smiled.

Life in the extremes. Necessarily so, it seems.

Several years ago, I read a fascinating reflection by the Buddhist scholar Stephen Batchelor entitled Living With The Devil, A Meditation on Good and Evil.  Batchelor postulates that evil is necessary, that the devil is necessary, in order for us to know Good.  And that only by knowing Good, can we comprehend the devil.  “For just as there can be no shadow without a body to cast it, there can be no devil without a buddha (an awake one) to know him.”

In her fascinating new book Being Wrong, the journalist Kathryn Schulz argues that it is essential to understand – at a fundamental level – what it is to be wrong in order to comprehend adequately what it is to be right; that the study – and implementation – of “wrongology” is indispensable to our imagination and creativity, indeed to our very humanity.

Business coach Dan Miller speaks of the success he discovered only through the devastating losses that he suffered.  That had it not been for his failure, he would not have found the success he enjoys.  “The irony is that, if I had continued on the path I was on…, I would certainly not be where I am today,” he writes.

It wasn’t many years ago that I sat with Peggy, my counselor and friend, filled with feelings of despair and loneliness and hopelessness.  I hadn’t fared well in a number of relationships.  And I wasn’t keen on risking my heart ever again. Peggy, a fan of C. S. Lewis, quoted the final lines from the movie Shadowlands:

“Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I’ve been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That’s the deal.”

I seem to recall that her cinematic intervention pissed me off at the time.  But she was right.  Oh the joy I came to find.

But how to know it without the sorrow?

The deal is that we don’t really get to choose.

Perhaps our intrinsic predisposition for discontent with things as they are is a genetic imperative to know things as they are not.

Spring flows from winter,  light from dark, hot from cold.  Love out of emptiness. Life from death. And back again. And again. One not possible without the other. Both necessary to make the whole.

Opting for safety doesn’t buy us much. A life of mediocrity perhaps.

“To fuck up is to find adventure,” says Schulz.

Amen I say.

2 Comments

  1. Peggy Lauria

    Hi Walt,
    It was always an honor to sit with you, even when I didn’t agree with your choices. I knew your good heart and intense spirit would lead you forward in time. Today you continue to amaze me and bring tears to my eyes :-)) Love and peace- Peggy

    Reply
  2. Tom Surprenant

    Walt, so true. I understand what you are saying for I have and am in lifes grasp… Your words ring so true to me….. You give me hope that maybe someday I will let someone into my heart, for now pain is in my hearts place. The montain and meeting you have helped greatly.. Take care my friend…. Until we meet again on another adventure!!!
    Tom S.

    Reply

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