Kayaking is a lot more difficult than I thought.
When you and a buddy are kayaking, the two of you need to communicate and coordinate paddling to turn in any direction, stop, or reverse. Or else you and the kayak end up face first in the swampy bushes and tree branches.
I learned that the hard way. Haha. But it was great, because we finished strong. Even though we were completely exhausted, hungry and therefore grumpy.
Team members have to coordinate their movement toward a single goal. Moving forward safely and quickly. But, each member has to recognize that while he may want to be the star of the show and lead, he may serve a more useful purpose following the lead. But that just makes the entire team succeed. And in turn, he'll succeed.
But coordination requires communication. Without Kwesi, my teammate, yelling out what direction we needed to go, I couldn't've oriented the kayak appropriately. And I had to tell him when I was tiring out and he'd have to either compensate for my weakness or reduce his overall paddling strength so that our paddling cadence was in unison with the same amount of force, preventing his paddling to overtake mine.
Lesson #2:
When you're exhausted and so is your partner, it's easy to give up and just let your partner do all the work. But that just leads to your partner resenting you and feeling used and cheapened. At that point, you'll both stop. And then what? You're stuck!
Because when it comes down to it, the day you're tired and incapable of moving forward, wouldn't it be nice to have a helping hand to make life a little easier when you're just about done?
Yeah, I thought so.
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