Embracing risk ...

Jeremy Kahan graduated in the class of 2014. I didn’t have him in my English class, but he was part of an epic Nature, Writing, and Solitude class.

The photo below was taken in the San Jacinto wilderness, moments after we aborted a mission to summit Tahquitz Peak because it was too icy. Well, most of us turned back. Jeremy (on the right with the headband) and a few others made it to the top.

We were about a half mile away from the summit when all of a sudden the trail was unbelievably icy. We were completely exposed, over an enormous dropoff at 8000 feet, and very quickly the situation had turned dangerous. Mr. Aiston and I started helping people retrace their steps. One kid wearing Vans (Jimmy Thompson) grabbed a tree and wouldn’t let go. We came to find that two or three of the faster hikers had separated and were out of yelling range, so Aiston went after them while I helped the rest of the crew shuffle-step back to safer ground.

Jeremy summitted that day. He reached the fire lookout station, belted out a huge “Yawp,” then headed back down the trail.

His post here has nothing to do with hiking.  It has nothing to do with standing on top of a mountain peak and yelling in triumph for all the world to hear.  But it has everything to do with risk.  Jeremy tells the story of picking up and moving to Israel “on a whim,” which might be compared to fighting through your fears and reaching the top of an icy peak.

Jeremy went to UC Santa Cruz (go Slugs!) and had a blast. He studied psychology, played club soccer, and spent a lot of time in the mountains and at the beach. After graduating, he moved to Tel Aviv, where he now works, hangs out with friends, and plays soccer.

Here, he talks about the benefits of following your heart, even when it doesn’t seem like the most logical thing to do. “My post is about letting loose and having fun in spite of all the self-imposed and societal expectations young (and old!) people face,” he said. “Essentially, it’s about learning to let go, cut yourself some slack, and have a good time.”

It’s about taking a risk and reaching the peak.

- C.H.

I want to start by saying that I told Mr. Harrington I would write this close to a half-year ago. I haven't felt comfortable putting pen to paper and advising on life when I have been more lost than ever. While I still feel somewhat lost, I hope that what follows will illuminate why I am excited to put this out there.

A week after I graduated college last year, I moved to Israel on a whim. The usual followed: visa, banking, groceries, apartment, and a job. It is much easier said than done in a country where my grasp on the language was rudimentary at best and which, culturally, could not be more different. At the end of the day, this is the Middle East.

What has followed in the past year could not be more ridiculous. There were some of the highest of highs and some of the lowest of the lows. Detained and extorted by military police at the Jordanian border over a cab fare and jumped of my passport, phone, wallet In Tijuana with an impending international flight are just two of the “highlights.” Others include months of complete social isolation, feeling like I made a huge mistake by leaving the US, and just having seemingly never-ending culture shock.

On the same token, I landed a great job, which allows me to travel and grow in ways I am unsure I could have ever in the US. I have met loads of cool people, have learned a new language, and have gotten over any ideas of what a normal post-college professional and life trajectory is supposed to look like.

Now I mention all this not out of a desire to speak about myself. Plenty of my Parker friends have great lives that they've worked incredibly hard for, and it's great to see people doing so well. A comparison while 7500 miles away doesn't do me much good, and, irrespective to distance, never will.

However, I can only speak about my experience and here's pretty much everything I have learned during this past year.

I don't have much control over what happens in life, and I am unsure if I ever will. Lord knows I will always put my best foot forward and try my hardest to make the world around me a better place.

Nonetheless, life does what it does and fighting against it with high expectations, overwork, and locking yourself away from life's experiences (like a good night out or just relaxing) to pursue "better" 

-- which is to say, the mainstream "better" for a 20-something-year-old American -- removes any and all opportunity to fully experience this super cool world we get to live in.

In short, I just want to get the message across that I felt was too infrequently expressed at Parker and from what it seems, the world at large. That is, do your best, and things will work out. Become a better person, friend, family member, employee, etc. and successes and failures (some of which are unavoidable) will follow. The failures may not be a good representation of anything having to do with you, but simply just life’s course. I missed out on too many great moments already over things I can’t control that ended up turning out just fine. Life moves way too fast to lose sight of the moments.

So I can't give any advice on how to land a job, make new friends, how to get over tough years in high school, or anything super practical like that. And I also really can’t give you much specific advice in general. All I can say is sometimes it's fine to be miserably lost in an amusement park and without worrying about that normally stressful fact, jump on the nearest roller coaster and just ride it out. Relinquishing the want to control what we can't control is more liberating than any control imaginable.