“The Edge is you Friend”. I could hear the voice of this tall Germanic man echoing in my head.
This was the year that I decided that it was time to learn to ski , maybe a little late to enter the next winter Olympics
but as the saying goes if you don’t try you don’t know.
Spas was the name of the coach and he said , all you have to remember is two things.
1) The ski is a turning machine, the design is such that if you point down hill and put you weight on the edge it will turn you. You do not turn the ski , the ski turns you. Your job is to put you weight on the edge, the more weight on it the more it turns you.
THE EDGE IS YOUR FRIEND.
2) As you go down the slope , if you feel yourself sliding; lean away from the slope,and not into it. As you do that you will increase you edge. If you lean into the slope towards your comfort zone you will lose the edge and accelerate in the process.
The edge is your friend ,you’ve got to find your edge and stay one it.
So after a few weeks of inspecting the ceiling of the local indoor ski slope while lying on my back tangled in the side netting , there I was following in blind panic this voice . I was hearing voices: how did I get here?
Why am I sliding down this track only wide enough to accommodate an overweight elf.
If it really is true that the edge is your friend ,why do so many people in life avoid living on it.
Maybe they had the same parents who would say : study hard, work hard, get a good SAFE job and you’ll end up with a comfortable pension to match your comfortable rocking chair.
Maybe a lot of people had the same mother who screamed at me ,keep away from the edge you’ll fall off. And surely the sofa wasn’t as dangerous as it first looked.
But I carried on edging and after a few hiccups (or should I call them falls) I was ready for the big time. I started down that nursery slope thinking yes this is the life. What a buzz, the adrenaline was flowing and when I got to the bottom thinking he’s right. The edge really is your friend.
What was there to be afraid of ,why was I willing to move from a cradle that rocked to a chair that rocked in 40-50 mind freezing , non adventurous years.
If Marie Curie was more concerned with self -preservation and avoiding risk we would not have had X-rays to this day. And I can tell you ,I reckon if I’d avoided the edge one more time that day I’d have needed the X-ray.
If in the 1800’s William Wilberforce had not turned his back on privilege and comfort which was his birthright , slavery would have carried on for decades more.
In today’s society as health and safety have tried to banish risk to the history books, over the last twenty years there has been a rise in edge seekers. People now pay good money to be tied to a rope an thrown off a cliff. Someone from the 1900’s would have thought it madness.
Extreme sports nowadays means more than running the gauntlet of the wife’s anger by taking the last Rolo.
Someone said to me, you just don’t know how tough life is, I live on an edge ALL the time. The edge is not my friend ,I’d swap it for a rocking chair any day. We all can end up on an edge, and that can be because of my own stupidity, selfishness or self absorption.
Or because of circumstances, we can be forced on an edge not of our own choosing.
So here’s the revelation, if you want to , you can choose to get off somebody else’s edge and go find one of your own.
For some it’s about taking a hard look inside and committing to the challenge of changing a habit of a lifetime.
For others it’s about refusing to die with the music still in you.
For centuries man has been learning the art of mastering his circumstances and not let circumstances master him.
So why would it be any different for you.
The question is now where is your edge?
Are you you on the right edge for this season of your life?
Who in your world is helping you to find it?
"The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you."
Frederick Buechner
So bring it on.
Viva Le Edge