The Small Handholds of Life

You know what guys? It’s just been one of those weeks. One of those weeks where you feel like everything is working against you. Finals didn’t go as well as I had hoped, I broke my dang leg, friends went back home for summer or graduated and moved away, and, to top it all off, in Mario Kart last night, it felt like every time I was going to have an epic win, I would get bombarded with red and green shells from behind and would lose my treasured victories.

I'm the one getting blown up if you can't tell...

Maybe my priorities may be a little off, but, by far the worst and most lifestyle impacting thing this week was my broken leg. I’ve been making summer climbing plans since last December (including Torrey's Peak in CO, Capitol Reef National Park, Disappointment Cleaver-Mt. Rainier *ironic*, and busting completely into the upper 5.12s and maybe a 5.13) and now most of them, if not all, are going straight down the porcelain throne.

In the midst of trying to make peace with this turn of events (I’m reading Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”), my over-enthusiastic brain has made many observations and I've come to some conclusions as well.

For those of you who aren't aware, getting around with a broken leg is a pain. You mostly use crutches except when you’re at home and you only need to travel a short distance, and then you hop. I’m sure it looks funny, but I haven’t quite managed to keep a good humor about it yet. It just gets a lot less funny when you are the one having to do it all day.

Anyway.

Don't let his smile fool you, I can tell he's thinking, "I JUST
got down the stairs and now you want me to go back
UP to grab something?!"

Moving around the apartment, sometimes I go Tiny Tim style and just use one crutch (slightly more or less humorous, depending on one’s point of view I’m sure). To alleviate the stress on the one arm and the one leg, I try to find other places for my free hand to grab and assist while traveling throughout the apartment. In the course of this, I've been pleasantly surprised to find that there are TONS of handholds everywhere that I can use just fine! I can use the door frames as a small crimp hold, or the bars going down the stairway as a pinch, my bed, trunk, and tables as mantles, and I've even snagged some bomber underclings on our coffee table that I can totally use to help me stand up from sitting on the couch! Who would have thought?!

All of these movements are natural for me and are even a little comforting. It’s as if the spirit of rock climbing knows my pain and has allowed me to at least relish the small tastes and reminders of climbing that I can get every now and then.

One day, while thinking of this, I realized that it’s likely that not every gimp in the world realizes and utilizes these holds that are almost essential for my happiness as a temporary monoplegic . It made me a little sad for them honestly. But I realized that this has a massive correlation to everyone's life, gimp or gimp-free.

In our lives, there are so many things that we can do. So many, in fact, that we really can’t do all of them or gain experience in all of them. But those things that we do gain experience in, we grow in them, we become better at them. As we get better, we begin to realize that within everything that we do are small steps, holds, inches to gain, or ground to cover. We can start to look at an overall picture, and then break it down to its components in order to understand the picture and what things we need to do to accomplish a goal or meet a task.

I think that everybody has the capability to do this, it is an essential life skill to be able to break things down into the small "holds" that make it possible to do anything. But I also think that not everyone dedicates themselves enough or has experience enough to see ALL the small "holds" that would make life easier for them and make them more successful. It takes time and effort and dedication. Not everyone really wants to do that. But isn't that what life really is? Isn't that what defines us as humans? The drive to progress, learn, and grow?

I think it does, and I think that this philosophy of seeing all the small "holds" or being able to see all the steps and pieces of a larger picture will lead anyone to eventual success and ease of way in whatever they're doing.

It's been helping this gimp anyway.

Brain Symphony #1

How is it that our minds work? I'm currently studying neuroscience and the subject of how the interactions between two or more cells develops into thought just fascinates me. I think that part of this comes from my background in biology already and part comes from my own struggles with anxiety and depression.

When I struggled with depression the worst, as per par for me, instead of giving up I decided to study and learn different techniques to overcome my depression. I always had this feeling that, if there wasn't a physiological problem, our minds are capable of change. Unfortunately, while studying psychology and discussing these issues with professionals and others who have had similar experiences, all I heard was that it was a chemical imbalance that wasn't my fault, and could mostly only be fixed with medication.

This wasn't what I wanted to hear.

So I kept looking.

Fortunately I found neuroscience and, with it, multitudes of studies that indicate just what I thought--our minds are capable of change and can become healthy again. Now I'm studying neuroscience at BYU and I'm mostly concerned with the physiological process our minds go through when we think critically (cognitive neuroscience), and the study of mental disorders and how best to approach fixing or solving those disorders (the goal being to help a person return to a point where they can stand on their own two feet without a crutch).

Going back to how the mind works though. While going through this time, my dear mother was very concerned for me and researched as well (she LOVES to research the heck out of any problem she comes across, a very admirable trait). Eventually she came across mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness mediation is style of meditation in which a person learns to be mindful and aware of all things and learns to accept current mind/body states or situations for what they are-- and cherish each current moment.

I was skeptical really. Meditation is what old Chinese men do in the movies where they call their student "grasshopper". How was it going to help me?

But I listened to my mother and decided to give it a shot. I was also pretty desperate. I'm naturally a pensive person anyway, so it didn't seem too difficult to meditate.

I was really wrong though. Proper meditation is not a function of intelligence, critical thinking, or raw mind power. Meditation is the simple act of being able to direct the flow of our thoughts. We can think of our minds as a constantly running faucet. Sometimes it runs slower, sometimes faster, but it never stops. In these days of constant information accessibility it seems to me that the water that pours from our faucet often splits into many different streams that all go in many different directions. It also seems that our society doesn't provide many different resources to teach us how to really channel and focus our thoughts in a calm, passive, yet precise manner.

When meditating, you learn to direct the flow of your water so it flows in one steady stream. This isn't accomplished by force, actually, trying to force your mind to focus will keep you from truly focusing and will be counterproductive overall.

Our minds are not so naturally scatter-brained, but they also aren't so great at focusing either. When we sleep at night our brains do perform a little "cleanup" that allows us to be less scatterbrained during the days. It also preserves memories that are important to us (this is one of the reasons good REM during sleep is essential). But also, animals only really learn to focus under intense stress and loads of chemical response. The challenge of humans is to promote focus and relaxation within given guidelines without inducing major stress response or going into a coma.

Meditation is a powerful tool to focus our thoughts and calm our minds. I've been meditating for over a year and a half and now it's much easier. It's opened a world of disciplined thought that I've never thought was really accessible or even knew existed. It's also kept my anxiety under control and helped me to understand mindfulness in everyday life. The ability to enjoy and accept every situation and moment of life with love and without fear.

Whether you do suffer from a mental disorder, scattered thoughts, stressful situations, or you feel that you are doing just fine, I encourage you to take at least ten minutes a day to at least just stop and let yourself be aware of your life and accept it with love.
You may just find a new world that you never knew existed before.