Life Lessons From A Kayak: Slow Down, You're Moving Too Fast

Today's adventure in my kayak unfolded on the Willamette River as I followed the downtown waterfront park promenade, a sprawling park that accommodates walkers, bicyclists, gaggles of joggers, homeless people watching the world go by, as well as business people taking their lunch strolls. I followed the seawall that skirts the Willamette, built in 1920 to protect the central business district from floods. Although this was my first time kayaking the downtown waterway, many times before I'd cruised the same waters on the Portland Spirit Yacht for sight-seeing and dining on the water. Today, however, I would see my city and it's premier ship in a whole different light.

The first thing that struck me while I was paddling the seawall was how nobody, not even the pedestrians, seemed to notice our kayaks. Everybody seemed to be staring straight ahead like they were robots, lost in their own world...or talking on cell phones, or listening to their ipods...but acting as if they were detached from the beauty and splendor of the dappled-sunny day around them. This struck me as sadly odd, the apparent invisibility of nature. If they didn't see us in our florescent yellow and orange kayaks, did they see the cherry trees in bloom? The mighty Willamette coursing below them? Each other? Recently a client commented to me on the disconnect he felt, living in a society where emails, texts, and phone calls take priority, and how technology has swept us away from direct and more meaningful contact with one another, and nature.

I studied the unseeing faces as they paraded past me, and I thought: to be fully alive is to notice you're alive. To live in the moment has been described as mindfulness; Buddhists practice mindfulness. Other spiritual, metaphysical teachings have called it "being present." Whatever you call it, being fully alive is opening our senses to what is around us; appreciating the sights, smells, tastes, touch and sound of things. It is the opposite of withdrawing inward. It is found in offering oneself to be a living part of the whole; to experience oneself as a vital, integral part of a larger Gestalt. I suppose it was because I was experiencing this shift in perception that I began to notice the zombie stares. As I paddled I realized I was a part of a living thing: like the river, or the city. I wasn't alone. I was part of It, a consciousness much larger than I.

As I mulled over this problem of mass deadening, I was paddling beneath the Hawthorne, Burnside and Morrison Bridges, marveling at the up-close views the water was affording. I was chatting with a friend bobbing in the kayak next to me about nothing in particular, when suddenly I realized the Portland Spirit had come sharply into view and was steaming our way. This 150-foot, triple-decked yacht can carry 450 guests. This is not a boat...this is a ship, and she was headed straight for us. It's an interesting phenomenon that while a ship this size can look to a bystander on land like it is creeping slowly, in actuality, it can be cutting through the water at more than 40 mph. In 1905, Einstien's Theory of Relativity explained this phenomenon as the "time-space frame" of a moving body, where objects in motion (like ships) appear to slow down when measured by the perspective of the observer. Basically, he was saying that what our senses tell us cannot always be trusted. Due to mechanics close to the speed of light, we cannot accurately judge how fast a body in motion is moving. At that precise moment I didn't bother with explaining Einstein's Theory to my friend.
I screamed, "Paddle! Paddle hard!" The yacht which had seemed so mild-mannered and slow-moving when I was a passenger now loomed terrifyingly massive and seemed to be moving unbelievably fast towards us. We paddled with all our might until we were out of harm's way, but that is the closest to a ship that size that I have ever come, or ever want to come!

I was shocked to find that seeing things from a different perspective can give you a new understanding, or appreciation of it. Take today, for instance. I've walked around the waterfront promenade countless times, and never realized before how "un-present" the people around me were. Probably because I was lost in my own thoughts at the time! By viewing the park's visitors from the water, I was able to notice something I'd missed before: they all seemed to be moving too fast. Because I'd slowed down in my kayak long enough to observe them, they seemed crazily driven...and sadly out of touch. I also learned that the ship which seemed slow from land (and even while I was aboard it) was, in reality, racing on the water. Einstein was right; my senses had been wrong. These are good examples of how my first perspective had been limited (or in the ship's case, wrong altogether).

Today's life lesson from a kayak: When we are willing to entertain a new point of view, our experience of the world can shift (and we can avoid being squashed!).