After I started going to Paddle Sports pool sessions in college, I got hooked. (See this post for a refresher.) It’s a little tricky to learn how to kayak in college, though. Unless you’re in summer school, you miss out on some of the year’s best kayaking weather. You start a new academic year at the end of summer, so even if you start playing around with kayaks in the pool right at the beginning of the school year, you’re going to have to work very hard at it to get out in the whitewater before winter.
Fortunately there was a happy medium near where I went to school in western New York state. There was a canal that flowed along (I think it was the city of) Rochester; parallel to the canal some group had built a kayak course. A kayak course is a series of 25 gates that paddlers are supposed to go through in sequence without touching any of the poles with any part of your boat, paddle, or you. You’re supposed to go through green gates while moving downstream, and red ones while coming back upstream. The water wasn’t flowing fast, but it was moving enough to make a difference between paddling in a pool and paddling in real water. It was a good way to work on technique, control, and gain a better understanding of how kayaks handle in moving water.
Since this was my first time in a kayak outside of a pool, I wasn’t very fast. On my first run I moved through the course slowly, trying to figure out how a kayak behaves in a current, seeing where I was going to need to make turns, cut across areas of hardest flow, and spot the more difficult places in the course. In a rookie moment, I even flipped over and couldn’t right myself. Embarrassingly, I had to slip out of my capsized kayak in a shallow little pool of water as these much better paddlers zoomed through the course. Even that was important though, as it was my first bailout in moving water (I’ll have a future post about a much more dramatic bailout later).
It’s kind of a strange tie-in, but in your service to Christ even your perceived failures are important. If you find yourself needing to bail out of a kayak, it’s probably because you’ve failed at righting yourself. Once you get used to bailing out of a kayak in a swimming pool, it becomes very easy, because there’s no current, there’s no major danger, and there’s probably someone standing by, ready to jump in and help you if you really need it. Bailing out in moving water, even on a little course like this, is different. The water’s cold, you’re wearing a life jacket, helmet, and other gear you don’t normally wear in the pool, and if you open your eyes underwater, you’re not going to see much. Whether it’s kayaking or some other aspect of life, failing during difficult circumstances increases your confidence and abilities during easier circumstances. Failures can make you better.
There’s an expression for attempting something that you’re probably not qualified or equipped to try. It’s called “punching above your weight.” In boxing, the two fighters in a given bout are generally very close in weight. That’s to make sure that the fight is fair. If two boxers are both in great shape, with little or no fat on either one of them, yet one is 60 pounds heavier than the other, it’s probably not going to be a fair fight. When fighters are very close to being the same weight, they might have different body types, but they’re close to being evenly matched. If you’re punching above your weight, it means you’re taking on someone that has an advantage in defeating you. In the Bible story of David and Goliath, David was definitely punching above his weight according to men’s standards. By taking on an obstacle or challenge that’s “beyond your weight class,” it makes the challenges that are in your weight class seem easy. Over time it also brings once-feared challenges within your class, and prepares you to take on something bigger and more formidable.
To continue with the kayaking course…as I spent time trying to figure out the best way to approach certain portions of the course, I started paying attention to how other kayakers were doing it. It was fun to see them shoot through the course and try different approaches to the various gates. “That was a cool move…oh, okay, and that set him up for the next gate.” I learned by watching others, and by listening to conversations that more experienced paddlers were having.
You might see where I’m going with this. The people you surround yourself with are the people whose attitudes, habits, and characteristics you adopt. You become more like them. Hanging out with people that are better or more experienced at something than you are will make you better at it. It’s tough to maintain a strong drive to improve if you’re already the most capable one in a group. Similarly, if you hang out with people with negative attitudes, poor character, or bad habits, it’s a fair bet that you’ll soon find yourself with the same outlook as them or doing the same things they are.
God’s going to give you challenges in life. Some you’ll feel confident about handling and some you’ll be more doubtful about. You might even fail at some of them, but it will be for a reason/purpose that you might not see right away. Some people get discouraged by failure and stop attempting the grand things, opting instead to take on things they believe they have a more reasonable chance of accomplishing.
It’s good to share your wisdom and experience with people less skilled than you, but also understand that this practice won’t help you grow your skills, it will only slow their atrophy. By all means mentor or teach those folks, but remember to spend time punching above your weight, too. It will make your current weight class seem easy, and that overwhelming challenge seem a bit less scary.
Time to open the floor for discussion. Has God ever placed a seemingly impossible obstacle in your path, only for Him to walk you through it successfully?