Sill Acquisition Part One:
Inspiration
Inspiration can be a fickle and mysterious business. It is so deeply present and undeniable when it is there, yet it leaves so much left to be discovered it’s a wonder we ever trust it at all. Despite this odd characteristic, it is extremely vital to the creative process.
A few years ago, on a sunny afternoon, I took my hammock and my ipod classic out to the park to relax. I set up, put on some tunes, and leaned back while the crows in the trees above me had an epic turf war. This park had an interesting shape to it. There was a large rolling hill of grass that became quite steep near the top, and it was entirely ringed with huge old trees. Near the crest there was a sort of bowl shape than spanned the width of the park, which I later learned was about 120 meters across.
After soaking in the beats of Radiohead’s new album, I packed up got in my car and started to drive around the top of the park. Then I saw something that absolutely mystified me. Across the entire width of the park attached to two trees on either side was a long thin white line vibrating and shimmering in the sun. It stretched down low nearly to the ground, weighted by a short but beautifully balanced person standing right in the center of the line. I gawked. It’s a wonder I didn’t crash my car, I was transfixed by this person slowly and meticulously stepping foot by foot to the other side.
Just like that, inspiration had set itself in.
Over the next few posts, I’m going to hash out the mountainous challenge that every person faces when attempting to have influence over their lives. This process, is an essential ingredient to self-fulfillment, and in building our influence over our circumstances. It is the process of acquiring new skills and abilities.
Today, we’ll talk about the SPARK the FLAME the FLOP.
The SPARK:
The spark is that special, hard to define moment of increased awareness, a spike or a peak in keen curiosity to something new, or to a new thought/perspective previously left cloaked in your mind. It is when your eyes seem to pulse open for a moment, and an unequivocal grin begins to form, perhaps your heart even beats faster.
I am foolishly hungry for newness and exploration, so I can become obsessed with finding the spark since it is so new and exciting. Sometimes my search is to the detriment to my own best interests. Think back to a moment in which you discovered something new, and it deeply peaked your curiosity. Maybe it’s something as simple as a new band you hadn’t heard of and you went home and downloaded everything they had. Maybe it was something bigger, a career path, a passion, a new lover. Now think of one that didn’t last very long. Maybe you tried to learn an instrument and were filled with an initial sense of passion, but it quickly fizzled out. A big piece of why you didn’t succeed in acquiring that skill is because you never turned your SPARK into a FLAME.
The FLAME
Turning the spark into a flame is where the real trickery and difficulty is hidden. Our lives are filled with tending to many fires. Imagine that every important area of your life was an individual fire, one for job, one for friends, a relationship, etc etc. They are all placed perfectly in a ring, and you can only tend one at a time. Some things in your life you just can not let burn out, and others you can over tend, stacking fuel until they consume the two fires closest and you can’t even tell the difference anymore. How many of you know someone who has a job that entirely consumed other areas of their lives? Or how about a partner?
All is fair in love and war, and we have all been burned one way or another before and learned our lessons. But how does this apply exactly to acquiring skill, in turning a spark into a flame?
The real trick lays in planning a new fire pit for a new flame. When you go off of a spark alone and trust it to keep to itself without giving it the proper intention and focus, it will quickly be gobbled up by a hotter burning flame. As someone who has spent a long time going off the heat of sparks alone, I know that if you want to have something new come into your life and develop, you have to make the space for it to exist.
I should mention the fuel for the flames. It lays in your intention, your energy, your thoughts, and your time. In your fire circle, the flame that burns the brightest and the hottest is always the one that gets the most of your intention and your time. Becoming diligent and mindful will keep these areas from consuming other flames that are important to you.
So to adopt a new skill, and to bring a new aspect to your life once the spark sets, it is essential you make adjustments to your fire circle, freeing space for another flame. This can be done in so many ways. Maybe it means learning not to worry about some things as much, as that takes a lot of mental bandwidth. Maybe it means cutting time spent on extraneous things that don’t fulfill you as deeply as this new flame would, *cough*Netflix*cough.
If you can free that space in your fire circle, and put in the extra intention to your inspired new interest, then you stand a decent chance of turning that spark into a flame. That is provided you get through the dreaded FLOP.
The FLOP:
The Flop is a point in the inspiration process that everyone hits, every time, without fail. Since we are dealing with inspiration here, the flop reveals itself suddenly and in varied ways. Understanding the flop and knowing it exists as opposed to not is like driving over a deep pothole at 60km/h with shocks as opposed to a stiff frame. The flop can come at any time while turning a spark into a flame.
The flop is simply and difficultly the feeling of recoil or disgust upon discovering something new about the object of our inspiration, but that something isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker. We have all had the feeling of being on an incredible first date, blissfully in the throws of affection only to discover later that our date is a member of our opposing political party, or hates Radiohead. It’s a distasteful piece of information to digest, but when you really look at it, it’s not as if things would explode instantly in your face. It’s just a major bummer, and it gives you an out. Whether or not you take that out is when you decide the fate of the spark, plain and simple.
After I drove past the park gawking at the slack-line walker and got home, I immediately researched slack-lining. I saw videos of incredible feats of daring people walking lines without a harness over deep gorges, waterfalls, and canyons. I found a Vancouver facebook group of slack-liners, and the very next day I went out and bought myself a beginner line, then ran out to the park to set it up. I was in the throws of the spark of inspiration.
Then I found it was actually really tough just to even find the right spot to set up my line. Some trees were way too close, others were too far, some were just right but they had low hanging limbs that got in the way. One pair I found was perfect, except that the trunk of one tree was too wide for the ratchet side of my line to go around. When I finally managed to set up the line, I jumped up on one foot and my leg wobbled so hard under me that I tipped right off. I bounced onto the line with my body, tumbled over the side of it and slammed my legs hard onto the ground. This was hard, really hard. Welcome to the flop.
That was my out right there, I could have easily taken down the set up and returned it with no one the wiser. You know what? I didn’t even think twice, and I got right back on the line. Within a month or two I was walking the full length, and by the end of the summer I could lay down on the line, drop to one knee, walk backwards, jump on to start, and I could easily eye up two trees to set it up anywhere I liked. I taught friends and strangers how to start walking the line and felt so happy to see their progress in 30 minutes exceed my own over the first 3 hours I spent by myself the day I bought it.
The flames you build have the ability to warm not only you but the people around you.
Inspiration is the first organic and spontaneous step in skill acquisition. The Spark will light you up, fire your energy and set you careening with blissful abandon. If you are diligent and mindful, you can set a place in your fire circle for an incoming new flame. When you nurture a spark into a flame, you will hit the inevitable FLOP. It is your sacred ‘out’ and you can choose to react to it any way you like.
