Putt and jump

   Well, this feels like old times.
   10pm on a Sunday night, and just starting to think about writing something! But since it’s the last weekend of the school-year-we-won’t-soon-forget, I’ve got some thoughts I need to get down on paper.
 
   My favorite saying for quite a while now comes from Brene Brown: “There is no courage without vulnerability.”
   We are asking students to be vulnerable all the time: in everything that they say, do, create….everything. Learning something new requires them to put themselves out there. To be brave. I think that as adults, we get competent, then complacent, in our daily routines and forget just how exposed that can feel.
   Or we don’t allow ourselves to show those vulnerabilities to others.
   We should remind ourselves once in a while.
 
   This past Friday, I went golfing. I have only golfed twice in my life, so although I understand the gist of the game, I have zero skills! Zero.
   And that is not a hyperbole.
   Thankfully, I don’t get perturbed easily by looking silly. But I do get frustrated when my understanding of what to do doesn’t match with my ability to actually do it! I forget that learning something new is hard. It takes time.
 
   Then today, I did something that required me to be EXTREMELY vulnerable.
   I jumped out of an airplane.
   Technically, I didn’t jump. I was attached to my tandem partner and he somersaulted us out into the atmosphere at 11,000 feet, where we were in free-fall for 6000 feet before he pulled the parachute and we soared the rest of the way to the ground.
   It. Was. Something. Else.
   (And it’s a whole other blog post of how amazing the whole experience was!)
 
   But the weird thing was, the golfing was the harder thing to do.
   I borrowed a set of miscellaneous clubs from the P.E. room, asked some questions, and smashed at the balls the best that I could. I had no idea what I was doing.
   For the sky dive, the instructor talked me through everything that was going to happen before we even left the hangar. At the plane on the ground, I got in and practised the exact motions that I needed to do. Once we were in the air, he kept me appraised as to our altitude and repeated the instructions once more. Then, we did the tandem jump literally tied together. He was in control, but let me guide our steering at points.
   Sure, the risks to sky diving were immeasurably higher, but at no point did I feel like I didn’t understand what was happening. The golfing was just for fun so there wasn’t a lot of pressure, but I still made a ton of self-deprecating jokes to cover up how clueless I was.

  This year COVID put us all in new situations. Sometimes it probably felt like my golf experience with shifting SHA goalposts and many, many questions.
   But then it also felt like sky diving too.
   No, not the earth-plunging in a free-falling feeling.
   The one where we harnessed ourselves to each other. Where we  did the best we could to talk each other through it. Where we rode it out to the end together, landing on our butts in a bumpy pasture airstrip.
   I mean. . . where we made it to June 30!!!
 
   We don’t know what September will bring. And right now, I’m okay with that. There is no courage without vulnerability, and this fall will need us to vulnerable in new ways again as we (hopefully) transition out of COVID and find our way again.
   I hope that everyone has a great last few days to finish off 2020-2021, and a relaxing and wonderful summer ahead.
   Take care,
   Edla.