I think for me it began with Birth itself and finding out how depressing life could be in the 1950s in Seattle Washington where I was born then. People struggled a lot with depression there because it rains so much during the year compared to most other places on earth. So, even though it is very beautiful when it is sunny there most of the year it seems to be cloudy or raining. I met a friend who said that the year she lived there there were only 7 days of sunshine the whole year. And this is quite possible that this was true knowing how Seattle can be year to year.
However, when I was 4 years old my father moved us to San Diego where it wasn't like this at all and it was mostly sunny year around. However, people in San Diego weren't as kind as the people in Seattle because of the Canadian influence of English types of politeness so it took some time for me to understand Californians and how they thought and acted.
I think a part of why I almost died of whooping cough in Seattle by the way was all the rain and clouds and sometimes snow there. Though I liked the snow a lot my first memory was them putting me outside alone at our house in the dark in a blue snow suit at that time until I was screaming because I had frozen my hands and they brought me inside and thawed out my hands from being cold in the snow. I think by then I was 3 or 4 years old when this happened and I suppose it was REALITY THERAPY for me to experience things the way they actually were rather than some fantasy thing about snow being magical.
Snow is one of the magical things in life but like the ocean you can have problems with it too so it's important to understand snow is both beautiful and deadly just like the ocean or swimming on a lake is deadly if you don't know how to swim and to stay alive there.
So, sometimes REALITY THERAPY is all parents have to convince a child of the truth of life physically wherever they are.
And this is also a part of finding one's path both spiritually and physically in life.
By God's Grace
However, by age 15 I had taught myself to ski on my father's World War II Army Surplus Snow Skis and by then I also was good at riding the waves at places like Santa Monica and Zuma Beach and by 16 I had bought my own car and we took our 10 foot plus longboards then to the beach from 1964 to 1969 when I was 21. I stopped surfing then at age 21 partly because my best friend went to the Viet Nam War as a jet engine mechanic. He studied and got certified as a jet engine mechanic so he wouldn't get drafted and die on the front lines of that war. So, instead he worked on jet engines of military planes in Thailand instead and didn't have to fight and just repaired military jet engines instead and also maintained them.
So, by the time I was 21 I could ski quite well and was good at surfing body surfing, boogie board surfing and SCUBA diving and snorkeling. However, I found that skiing was a safer sport for me than board surfing just because people were hurting each other competing for good surf spots and running over each other with their boards in the 1960s and I guess this still goes on today.
However, with skiing I could always find a place to ski with my friends so I could actually enjoy it every time as long as the snow conditions permitted. and then in 1976 I bought Fisher Cross Country Skis in Ashland Oregon for myself and my wife and then my son was 2 years old and we lived in Mt. Shasta and I could ski whenever the snow conditions were good. Life was good then and now.
But, finding one's path forward is always a very individual thing that one must discover usually through the path of hard knocks.
However, if you didn't have to struggle to find the perfect path for you maybe you wouldn't appreciate it either.
We all must build our own physical and spiritual paths in order to survive here on earth or even want to survive here at all.
By God's Grace
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