Scared? Smart? It's a Wild World

Forget It? Remember It! Journaling Do... Lessons From My Motorcycle

Scared? Smart? It's a Wild World

Martha Beck spoke at Changing Hands bookstore tonight, and packed so much information, power, inspiration, laughter and honesty into just over an hour, that I took notes faster than an Angry Bird slingshots at a green pig.

Her new book, Finding Your Way in a Wild New World is subtitled Reclaiming Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want. It's not only a mouthful, it's a mindful. And maybe a heartful.

Martha spoke about fear in a fascinating way. She was learning to track rhinoceros and as most trackers, followed footprints that led through the bush in South Africa. She kept her eyes glued to the ground as the tracks grew less visible until she heard a companion gasp. Looking up for the first time she realized that she was within 20 feet of a mother rhinoceros and her baby. And the mother rhino was angry.

Martha Beck at Changing Hands bookstore.

Martha is a slight woman, and could have easily been trampled to death. What happened in the next second was that she thought she was going to die, and felt a wave of fear and panic. And then she wondered about the two questions that form the cornerstone of the book–"How the hell did I get here?" and "What the hell should I do now?"

instead of being filled with fear and panic, Martha realizes that this second fulfills a lifelong dream of adventure, being fully engaged in the natural world, and living in the moment with friends. Were she to die, it would be with a "joyful pounding heart."

As she was standing in front of us, she did not die, but she knows that each life has an angry rhino, and we all must bring ourselves to decide what to do in that moment of truth.

After the rhino encounter (which has an amazing resolution) Martha spent the next five years speaking to many people in many cultures so she could answer the question, and she realized that the answers she heard from wise women, shaman, medicine men (and women) were the same–that all of us on earth are facing huge change–economic, climatic, geographic, historic, and cultural. This change is roaring down on us like a giant wave. We can either drown in it or surf through it. If we want to survive, we have to become surfers who become skilled in surviving change.

"Our culture trained us to be factory workers–to sit still and take limited action when we were created to solve huge problems as they occur, spontaneously," she told us.

Her book explains the four steps that contain the wisdom she gathered during her years of research:

Wordlessness
Oneness
Imagine That Which Has Never Existed
Forming (not forcing) your art, your life

I'm looking forward to reading her book, not just as a reader, but as a life coach who knows that each of us can have a fulfilling life, rather than a life of drudgery and soul-snuffing work.

—Quinn McDonald agrees with Benjamin Franklin who said, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."