Charlot Gunner's Lesson

Charlot Gunner is a Cree Indian guide that led me and a group of guys on a grueling 30 day, 300+ mile canoe wilderness trip through uncharted territory about 500 miles North of Quebec in Canada.

He was amazing.

If a canoe broke, he could fix it with his knife and some wood.

He could always make a fire, even if it was raining and the wood was wet.

(He probably could even make it rain.)

If we needed meat, give him a gun (which we didn't have) and a few hours, handled.

He never used a map, yet guided us seamlessly through rough, wilderness terrain.

He would laugh at us (boys at least 30 years his junior) as we huffed and puffed on multi-mile portages, while he would merily breeze by.

And something else I will never forget it...

The ravaging bugs, the blankets of mosquitoes, horse flies, moose flies, back flies would never bother him, never. And he didn't use deet or any kind of repellant. Meanwhile they would drive us way past the point of crazy.

Why did they not bother him? Why did they not take huge chunks out of him like they did us?

Because he grew up in the environment.

He was used it.

He was harmonized with it.

We were not.

We struggled against it.

So we suffered.

Sound familiar?

It's a common pattern in our lives.

To resist discomfort. To fight against it. To try and make it go away.

This is the defensive ego fighting reality and the result, ironically, is an increased experience of what you're fighting against.

Typically what happens is that you fight until you realize you can't win.

Then you give up.

Then you win because you give up.

At that point you accept reality, you harmonize with it, and the stressors cease to be stressors and will not be attracted to you.