Hello World! I am pleased to report that all the Bates Nordic Bobcats have clawed their way through another tough finals week and emerged on the other side, bright eyed and bushy tailed, into the wonderful world of vacation. It is easy to move on to leaving tracks on the trails instead of butt-imprints on the library chairs and chew marks on our pencils, but, if you chew hard enough, it seems that learning and skiing go together! Synergy!
Here we go: For my final paper for an Education class. I chose to write about Humanism and its role in teaching. As I started reading different humanist psychologists, I realized they were articulating something I had been thinking about with my skiing for a long time. Abraham Maslow in particular seems to really be a nordic skier in disguise. In his book Towards a Psychology of Being, he writes about how people sometimes think the primary human goal is to get rid of all of our "needs" and achieve instead an "state of rest," "equilibrium," or "lack of pain," and towards a state of not wanting. In this way, we motivated by deficiencies towards a state of "not wanting."
However, being motivated by our deficits and merely coping with what is thrown at us is not the right way to be living. Maslow talks instead about being "growth motivated." This is not "goal oriented." It is a state where the goal and the result are synonymous. When we define things in terms of goals, we tend to consider an endpoint which justifies the means, but instead, Maslow suggests that we should live like children who find, but do not search. We are not "preparing to live, we are living," we are being, not becoming.
So how does all this psychobabble about a dead guy relate to skiing? My boy Maslow says "We don't do it because it is good for us (we don't do it for the muscles), because psychologists (Becky) approve, because it is good for the species (because it makes us popular,) or because it brings external rewards (bragging rights,/cash money) we do it for the same reason we pick one dessert over another, choose to kiss one person over another." The easy thing to get from this is that we are not skiing for the results. But what was more interesting to me was how it influenced my idea of racing. When I reflect on my best races, they are not the ones that hurt the most. I was not pushing, I was not "coping with the pain," I was not grimacing. Like the child Maslow suggests, I found the results but did not search for them. It is very similar to the Taoist idea of "effortless action." We have been training for years to ski fast, we want to ski fast, and the next step, it seems, is just to let ourselves ski fast. It is glamorous to think that the person that tries the hardest wins the race, but in fact, it is really just the person that skis the fastest-and often that person is relaxed and released from any dichotomy of mind and body, process and result.
Despite what it looks like, this was not a great race. See why above.
So, after a long finals week during which I unfortunately wrote more pages than I skied kilometers, I at least came away with some sweet skiing related knowledge, the ability to use dichotomy in a sentence and at least 4 hours procrastinating by looking at pictures of Maslow's mustaches.
Keep your eyes out for an action packed recap from Jane about actual racing and snow!!!
Thanks for reading! Go Bobcats!
Britta
P.S. If you aren't interested in reading this whole blog post, here is a summary via Pooh Bear.
“To know the way,
we go the way,
we do the way.
The way we do,
the things we do,
it's all there in front of you.
But if you try too hard to see it,
you'll only become confused.
I am me and you are you.
As you can see;
but when you do
the things that you can do,
you will find the way.
The way will follow you.”
-The Tao of Pooh
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