[OSList] Trust (slow)

[doug]

Derek--

Wow! This post is a keeper! Thank you!

Perhaps we should rename it to Trust (slow). So I did, but slowly.

:- Doug. Germann



On 02/02/2014 04:52 PM, Derek W. Wade wrote:
> You all rock. If "learning is remembering something you already knew,"
> then I'm delighted with the gift of learning I've received from this
> conversation.
>
> Back when I used to fly airplanes upside-down as a competitive sport, I
> received a simple, profound lesson that I now realize I can apply to
> Open Space.
>
>   I was having breakfast with my coach, world aerobatic champion Nikolay
> Timofeev. He was going to compete later that day in the "Unlimited"
> category -- something he had been doing for many years -- and I was
> going to fly my first competitive routine in the much less complicated
> "Sportsman" category. A pilot's first Sportsman flight is a milestone:
> its the one and only time in your aerobatic career to win a "best first
> time" award. I was nervous and concerned about time; gulping my coffee,
> obsessively looking over the plan of figures to be flown and judging
> criteria for each, checking and re-checking the timetable of the day.
>
> I was nervous both because it was my first time flying at a more
> advanced level, and also because we had had a few bobbles the previous
> few days, including the canopy of the aircraft coming off in flight and
> falling to earth who-knew-where. So I would be flying open-cockpit, the
> wind in my face for the first time. A lot of unexpected firsts that were
> out of my control.
>
> Something compelled me to ask, "Nik, what's one piece of advice you can
> give me for this flight?" I was hoping for something about altitudes or
> airspeeds or specifics of the maneuvers to be flown.
>
>   Nikolay finished chewing his bite of toast, took a measured,
> deliberate sip of coffee, set his cup down carefully, laid both his
> hands palm-down on either side of his breakfast, and said, "before
> flight, you must do everything slow. Everything. You drink coffee, you
> do slow." He demonstrated with a careful lift of his cup. "You walk out
> to airplane, slow. Steady. Starter will be run around, get everyone in
> airplanes, go go go, now now now. You breathe. You put on parachute
> slow.  Get in airplane now -- but get in slow." He accentuated with
> smooth, meditative movements of his hands, as if doing tai chi at the
> breakfast table. "Touch airplane, feel it. Breathe. Slow. That is best
> thing for this flight. All flights."
>
> It was a bit of a slap in the face -- what, I can't just have some
> pointers? Doesn't he realize how many things I'm dealing with here? But
> I did as he said. I left myself enough time that I could be deliberate
> and unhurried with all my preparation. The starter did indeed try to
> hustle me along when it was my turn to line up, but I smiled and yelled
> "thank you, got it" before I began buckling the chute on.
>
> It was SO hard. At every step I felt the need to check on something, to
> adjust some tiny little detail. But I did it. Slow and deliberate, just
> breathing with each motion. Paying total attention to one thing at a time.
>
> It was the best flight I ever flew. It felt like the airplane had turned
> transparent and I could see everything with 360-degree vision. At one
> point I was in the middle of a maneuver called a hammerhead turn -- a
> vertical up line until you run out of airspeed and then the engine's
> torque pivots the plane to point downward -- and saw that my path would
> take me into a cloud. Entering a cloud is illegal, and you're required
> to break off and restart your flight with no official penalty, but it
> can break up the judges' flow and result in lower marks.  Without
> thinking I pulled the propeller pitch back to act as a speedbrake  --
> nothing I had ever been trained to do -- and completed that figure just
> under the cloud.
>
> Hours later I was still working out why it had worked, and why pulling
> the throttle would not have worked. I didn't feel like I had made the
> decision, I felt  like the plane and I both did it. It mattered: I
> received best first-time and best overall in category for that flight.
>
> Earlier in this thread, Harrison said:
> "...coming to the circle scattered, confused and anxious is a good way
> to fry your soul and create an environment that matches your state."
>
> And, David Osborne  wrote:
> "Trust = the safety condition for self-organization."
>
> So my lesson from you all is that whether the circle is drawn in the sky
> with an airplane, or drawn on the ground and made of people, its
> critical to treat that circle as a magic circle; to enter it with all
> awareness, calm, trust, and respect due a place of power.
>
> I thank you all for the insight. I'll remember that flight -- and Nik's
> lesson -- any time I attempt to Open Space.
>
>
>
>
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