Gate Station

Gravity. Vector dynamics. It's like a constant struggle between these invisible forces that want to hold you down without pulling you under. It happens every day, yet you can get to a point where you don't really notice it.

How does that happen?

When you stand on the shore, two-foot surf looks like nothing. If you were somehow able to stand stright up on the surface to the water, the waves themselves wouldn't even come up to your waist. But that's not the way you experience them. You see them from surface level - bobbing on your toes half-in and half-out of the ocean. You see them lying flat on your belly against the wax-ridged edge of a surfboard.

When you're half underwater, anything can seem too much to handle.

So many swirling currents. Eddys. Undertows. Jobs that haven't appeared, futures beyond grasp, feelings that never seem to fade.

The water peaks behind you, higher than you were expecting it to be. Whitewater summits and suddenly you realize you're too far inside for everything to go just the way you want it to. There's this moment where you have to make a decision. Do you push into it -- knowing the takeoff is going to be late, that there will be rapids that will make everything else difficult, especially when it seems like the things you want, the things you truly enjoy only last for what seems like a moment...

..Or do you wait for the next one?

The real answer is not to get caught inside. The real solution is to be in a place where water wants to fall, but hasn't just yet. Where you can choose between dropping in or paddling out without worrying about what's coming up behind.

Instinct. Abandon.
Experience. Fear.

Invisible forces pushing and pulling, like the glare from a rising sun making everything else difficult to discern.

..Quit thinking so much.
Stop trying to figure everything out.

After all, Where's that ever gotten you?

[Listening to: Injected, "Only Hurts Awhile"]