For a couple of years now I have been teaching myself how to SUP (stand up paddle board). It’s a pretty simple process. But like all simple things there is a depth to practice and technique that helps you get better and better. And the changing context of the ocean and the winds and weather means there is never a way to “win” at it.

The thing about SUP is that the conditions change radically all the time. One day is flat calm and the water is like glass. Another day – like today – it’s windy and the chop is sloppy and the currents are really strong. Almost every time out is a new challenge with new little victories and little defeats.

Mastery is like that. It’s about learning a technique and then applying it as the context shifts. It’s about getting good at something and then facing a humbling experience that teaches you something about yourself.

Today it was learning about the power of the currents whipping around Dorman Point. Lately it’s been about trying to offer quality process when there is fear and ego and expertise at play.

Mastery comes from a myriad of little learnings gathered from a myriad if different context. There is no flash of insight that makes you a master and there is no way you can ever feel you have arrived. That we are all human and always falling short of our ideal for ourselves and others is the great secret that helps us to connect, if we can see it. If we instead hold ourselves so far above or below this line of vulnerability that we can’t see our small tender selves in others then the benefit of our little learnings are lost, mere spindrift in the current of our learning lives.

I think it was my friend Toke Møller who said “never trust a sword teacher without scars.” Truly.

Crane Stookey on a kind of “I don’t know” leadership.

To keep the defenses down I rarely give the teenagers in the Sea School crews a straight answer, so that after a while their dependence on me as the “leader” breaks down. They need to feel that in the big picture I am trustworthy, that they are safe with me, but they also need to learn to distrust me and trust themselves, with a self-confidence that doesn’t depend on knowing. Rather than knowing on my terms, it’s better that they don’t know on their own terms, so they are inspired to find their own answers.

An overreliance on experts who claim to have answers depletes the capacity of groups. I love Crane’s idea of being trustworthy rather than providing a false sense of security.

This is a brilliant description of what it is like trying to govern indigenous communities on this continent:

Going back to the Two Row Wampum, it says that we’re not supposed to steer each other’s boats. But the way that I perceive things is that the canoes have been hijacked and are actually aboard the settler ship. And we are basically trying to live our canoe way of life on top of that settler ship. So saying that I’m not supposed to steer the settler ship, well, you know what, my fucking canoe is sitting in that fucking settler ship. So national liberation for Native people and organizing is like saying, you know what, I don’t want to tell you how to run your own fucking ship, but your ship and the people that run it, the captains, they are not listening to the workers or to whomever, the deckhands and whatnot.

From Hijacked canoes and settler ships.

• Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), civil engineering student
• Hélène Colgan (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
• Nathalie Croteau (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
• Barbara Daigneault (born 1967), mechanical engineering student
• Anne-Marie Edward (born 1968), chemical engineering student
• Maud Haviernick (born 1960), materials engineering student
• Maryse Laganière (born 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique’s finance department
• Maryse Leclair (born 1966), materials engineering student
• Anne-Marie Lemay (born 1967), mechanical engineering student
• Sonia Pelletier (born 1961), mechanical engineering student
• Michèle Richard (born 1968), materials engineering student
• Annie St-Arneault (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
• Annie Turcotte (born 1969), materials engineering student
• Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (born 1958), nursing student

Although I have worked for years in the United States including in and around health issues, I have never fully understood the ways in which Americans pay for their health care, or why their insurance company-based system is so important to them.  This article explains how complicated it is to choose a medical plan and how expensive it is not to have one.  And fundamentally this doesn’t change under Obama’s new plan.  The premium this family pays, even now under the plan they want to keep, are more than twice what I pay for a family of four in a public health care system in Canada, and because we make more than $30,000 a year we are in the highest bracket in BC.  We pay $133.00 a month and here’s what we get.  There is no deductible.  It’s basic, and extended medical plans obviously offer more benefits like dental and eye care, pharmacy and ambulance services (Great West Life’s mid-range plan is close to $400 a month).  But with this basic coverage, my son has been in the emergency room twice in the past year with “12 year old testosterone accidents” – broken and suspected broken limbs – and we have incurred no costs other than paying a small fee for ambulance transport.  If I wanted the same extended coverage as this family, I’d probably end up paying the same or more (and the deductibles would be WAAAAAY less), but if I don’t want to deal with an insurance company – and believe me, I don’t – then I don’t have to.  My basics are covered and I have peace of mind.  If I work for an employer, I just sign on with their extended plan.  No problems.

Many Americans object to being “forced” to pay insurance premiums.  How would you feel if you had the thought that paying premiums to the state for accessible health care was actually a peace of mind situation rather than the actions of an overzealous government seeking to limit your freedoms?  This is all a matter of perspective and while I know millions of Americans share the view that I have about publicly funded health care, millions still do not and neither of course do the insurance companies who make their money by charging premiums and minimizing coverage.  And now, in Washington, their political lap dogs are doing their dirty work and frankly it hurts the creative and entrepreneurial spirit of Americans who would rather be doing their own thing in the world than tying themselves to wage slavery for the benefit of a cheaper health plan.

Public health care is not perfect but it is brilliant.  In Canada, we have very little stress about these issues compared to our southern cousins.  Every American I know – and I know hundreds – worries about their health care insurance.  In Canada we only worry about it when we have a wait for a service or a bad experience in the hospital, or we have a cranky complaining day.  The rest of the time, we are cared for and cared for well, and I don’t think we know how lucky we are.

Good luck my American friends.