In the Eye of the Hurricane

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Unless you have been living under a rock, you have watched or listened to Lin- Manuel Miranda’s brilliant smash hit Hamilton. In the musical, Alexander Hamilton is in the midst of a personal crisis when he belts out the tune Hurricane. 

In the eye of the hurricane

  There is quiet

For just a moment

A yellow sky

The eye of the hurricane is described as the center of the storm. The zone of calm behaves differently over land and water. However, one fact remains, this respite from raging winds and rain can only be found in the center of the surrounding devastation and chaos. Like Hamilton, we are in the eye of the hurricane. We desperately want to free ourselves from this position because no movement feels like death. The opposite is true. We are all in the cleft of a rock being protected and looked after in the midst of the planet pivoting towards an unknown future. 

The challenge we all face today can be wrapped up in one simple word, control. 2020 is stripping away the façade and showing us who is behind the curtain. It’s like someone asked us to get on the treadmill with these simple instructions; I’ll tell you when to stop. We would prefer someone to tell us you are going to run 10 miles, 100 miles, 1000 miles… anything. We need to know because we only trust our own ability to paddle ourselves out of the storm. I’m here to say that you are in the eye of the hurricane. The safest place for you and your family is exactly where you are. The winds are raging outside this eye and we must look around and trust that this tempest has purpose. I don’t pretend to know why all the events of today are going on. But I do know that we will one day look back and realize that it was all for something greater than our selves. 

Keep Running,

Matt Davenport

In the eye of the hurricane
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Biscuits and Gravy

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When you look back at your life can you identify a time where anxiety helped your situation? If you’re like me the answer is never. Anxiety is like the comfort food of the human condition. We know it doesn’t help us in the long run, but the high carb sentimental indulgence makes us feel better in the now. 

What if we collectively decided to put aside the gravy and actually pursue something in the short term that will benefit us down the road? I’m not immune to anxiety or worry. In fact, nobody is. These emotions come from a place of yearning for security, safety, and success. Years ago, it became obvious to me that being optimistic about the future costs the same as being negative. Being an optimist doesn’t mean you believe everything will work out perfectly it simply means that it will work out like it supposed to work out. I’m ok with that. I’m not in control of anything other than the way in which I respond to a perceived good or bad experience. That’s just it, we don’t really know what is best for us until years have passed and we can appreciate the fact that the greatest disappointments of our life were actually get out of jail free cards. 

I don’t pretend to have a crystal ball that predicts what’s next. From experience, I can tell you that there will be many good and bad things in our future. The good will be great and the bad times will make us feel like the good times are never coming back. As human beings, we are hard-wired to hold on to the negative thoughts from our past and transpose those insecurities to our future. I for one reject that notion and proclaim that the best is yet to come. 

Today is a new day. Today has never existed before. All the negativity that is suffocating you from last week is knocking at your door hoping to ruin another one of your precious days on this planet. Don’t let it. If you are reading this, take a deep breath and shout at the top of your lungs – you are not the boss of me! You are an independent, unique, one of kind human being that has been gifted with the intellect to reject self-doubt and failure. Today is your day to turn the ship back into the storm and declare that you are a force to be reckoned with. 

Full Speed Ahead,

Matt Davenport

Biscuits and Gravy
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What Can Possibly Go Wrong?

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This is never going to end! These words have crossed my mind several times in 2020. What if? What then? Words of doubt eventually lead to anxiety. Accepting the fact that you are not in control quickly puts anxious thoughts into perspective. 

Recently, my family was fortunate enough to take an RV trip. As we pushed off from Orange County, I felt reasonably confident we would get to all our destinations on time and intact. Besides the mountain of snacks and luggage, we packed our 5 kids and for good measure, my sister and brother in law saddled up for the exploration. Yes, you read that right, we had 9 people in an RV headed East in hopes of enjoying a perfectly flawless summer vacation. What could possibly go wrong?

In life, we make plans that, looking back, were entirely naive and maybe even delusional. Yet, we make them because we are optimistic and have a romantic notion about the winding road ahead. Somewhere along this twisted path we become control freaks and do everything in our power to drive in a straight line when the road clearly calls for power steering. 

There we were having a blast and enjoying the scenery when an errant golf ball aggressively searched out and destroyed our windshield. This event was not in our bullet-point plans but proved to be a chance to learn how to patch up glass with duct tape and nail polish. We had another learning opportunity on the return trip when both back tires on the left side of the RV blew at 70 mph. Is this the result of the 2020 curse pursuing us as we drive or is this simply the way life goes? We make plans and we assume we are in control of them. Turns out we are not, and we never were. 

Here’s the upside, the movies we watch and the books we read are not about people who lived a predictable and always favorable life. No, we are most deeply interested and invested in those who overcame. Those who were beat up and told they would never amount to much yet persevered. The stories my kids will tell of this fabled voyage will not be about the campsites we made it to on time, rather they will tell THEIR kids about the time dad was forced to use nail polish to hold our family adventure together.  

Have Fun,

Matt Davenport

What could possibly go wrong article
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