View from the North 40: It's the column in which I take a shot at philosophy

As I said in a column a few weeks ago, I’ve taken up archery and am completely enamored with it, largely because it has turned out to be one of those things in life that just hits me on a pretty deep and introspective level.

Sure it’s fun — how can you not feel a rush shooting a bow and arrow? I split the tail end of one arrow with a perfect hit from a second arrow. That’s some next-level Annie-Oakley-with-a-bow stuff right there (Robin Hood, who?). Of course it was purely by accident, but I was so excited it took me a full 15 minutes to think about the fact that I ruined a nock, and not only was it going to cost money to replace it, I was down a stick-bullet for the day.

The thing beyond the fun, though, is the kind of philosophical zen life lesson vibe-y feeling about it. I don’t know how to explain it without sounding a bit more out there than I normally do, but here are a few examples to demonstrate how shooting archery ends up being a metaphorical life lesson.

First of all, my bow is a traditional recurve so it doesn’t have sights. I had to figure out how to aim at and hit the target before I lost all my arrows or hurt someone. I pretty quickly figured out I could use the arrow tip as a sight, but I had to aim about 2 feet down and 8 inches to the side in order to hit the target center. I had some pretty exciting early success, and I don’t mind saying that I was quite full of myself over it.

To improve, I kept studying, and what I was learning was that it’s OK to aim like I was if I wanted to rely on a crutch to shoot, but “real” traditional archers will learn to see or understand or feel or whatever where their arrow is pointing — just like we understand how to point our finger at a single object no matter where our hand is positioned. Challenge accepted.

Unfortunately for my ego, I also had gotten bored just shooting at the same target on the same hay bale on the same haystack from the same distance. My response, of course, was to shake everything up — locations, shooting distances, target heights, everything. That ego-blockade peaked for me one day when I was out trying to hit a target set at ground level 12 yards away with only part of one bale as a backstop.

I sent an arrow skittering off into the unknown distance. Searching for an errant arrow in a large patch of old-growth wild rose bushes gives one time for reflection. I realized that I was being unfair to myself by not taking time to figure out the changing elements individually. That 20 minutes I spent trooping around in the brush beyond my target gave me a good perspective and a solid life lesson about learning the fundamentals.

Life lesson No. 1: If you’re going to be stupid, make sure you have a big backstop to save you from yourself.

The last two weeks have been stressful at work with some big deadlines for me. I worked hard, lost some sleep, blah blah blah. I was a wreck. I was still trying to take some breaks, spend time shooting my bow. You know the drill, take some me-time, find my bliss — you’ve seen the commercials. Eventually, though, I was just too tired and distracted and my dismal shooting was depressing me.

Sometimes, I guess, you have to be realistic about how much pressure you’re under and realize you can’t always do it all.

Life Lesson No. 2: Given a chance, work will suck the fun right out of your life.

In my pursuit of the traditional archery skill of aiming by pointing, however vague that is, I’ve been focusing on being consistent with my stance, my draw and the release, so the only change to wrap my brain around is how I see to aim.

I had shot six arrows left-handed that were OK. The grouping wasn’t great, but it could be called a group. I switched to shoot my last five arrows right-handed, and the first one went a little wider. I definitely lost that group feeling.

Then the last four arrows sank into the epicenter of the first seven arrows so tightly grouped that they couldn’t have been closer if I had grasped them altogether in my fist and jabbed them into the hay bale as one.

It was awesome.

You bet, I called my husband to come look at what I did. I’m never too old for an atta-girl.

He asked me what I had done differently, and I couldn’t say, other than that those four shots felt like I was just in the groove somehow. And that leads us to:

Life Lesson No. 3: Life is sometimes a scattered crapshoot, just keep firing until you get a result you can take the time to brag about.

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And if my boss is reading this, I’m not saying that MY job is a soul-sucking nightmare. I mean work in general is — mostly other people’s work, of course, at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .