Episode #922
October 3, 2026
There are two stages to every skill.
The first is learning the rules.
The second is allowing those rules to become spontaneous action.
Muscle memory, instinct, and body-mind coordination express spontaneity.
When learning how to surf, I was taught to paddle on my belly and ride the wave on my feet. I thought, “paddle under the swell, kneel on the board, one foot up, then the other, and stand up.” By the time I stood, the wave had passed me by. A friend who was teaching me said, “Just leap up into a stand. Don’t crawl up.” On the next wave I pushed hard with both hands and leapt up onto my feet in one continuous motion. The board slipped into the base of the curl and I was surfing.
My father taught me how to drive. We started in a parking lot where he pointed out the parked cars, concrete wheel-stops, pedestrians, and shopping carts. “Watch out for those; don’t run into them; slow, turn or brake to avoid collision.” All these objects were just beyond the hood of my car, but the instructions were simple, based on logical actions. Then we went to the freeway. My eyes were fixed on the front of the engine hood. I swerved in the lane at 55 MPH. I could not anticipate the cars in front of me. Sudden slowing from weaving cars ahead surprised me. “Look a quarter mile ahead of you!” said my father, a little fear in his voice. When I looked ahead, my brain automatically processed the future of my drive. I saw everything coming, including the forced perspective of the lane. It became easy to stay straight in my lane and maintain a 3-second following distance.
Aha.
The problem had never been steering. It was where I was looking.
When writing a draft story, I like stream of consciousness. It allows me to foresee the end of the sentences, paragraphs and thoughts. I can get the gist, feel, and color of the story on paper without worrying about capitalization, punctuation, or sentence structure. The heart of the story is in the draft. In editing passes, I can fix the grammar. Using Grammarly or AI is ok at this point because the original art is already on the page.
Even reading is a spontaneous action. Words on the page follow each other, building meaning as you read. Often the full meaning of a sentence isn’t known until you reach the prepositional phrase at the end. If I read each word one word at a time, I forget the subject and action before I come to the end of the sentence.
People tend to oversteer a boat. They don’t account for inertia. A boat tends to keep turning even after you center the wheel. Most new pilots will chase the inertia, swinging the bow left and right around their heading. Experienced pilots will stop the turn early, allowing the bow to slip into its heading. This is more a feeling than it is a procedure. They keep their focus on the heading, not the motion of the boat.
When I was taught to skydive, I was told, “If you want to turn in free fall, dip a shoulder to turn in that direction.” This absolutely works, but small actions have large effects at 120 MPH, so students tend to over-turn. If you turn your head and look where you want to go, you go there. When your head turns, your body twists, dropping a shoulder automatically. With a minimum of motion, you go where you look.
We spend much of life memorizing instructions.
Wisdom and skill begin when we no longer have to consciously remember the instructions because they have become instinct.
IF YOU LIKE THIS BLOG YOU’LL LOVE MY BOOKS:
“Skydivers Know Why Birds Sing” by Ricki T Thues is now available on Amazon.
It is a Love story of Rick and Paula Thues and their 35 years of Skydiving.
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ALSO AVAILABLE:
“Technically Human” by Ricki T Thues, the iMentor, is available on Amazon.
It is a compilation of selected episodes from this bLog which tell the story of Humanity through the eyes of the iMentor.
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The ebook version of “Technically Human” is also available on Kobo. Click HERE.
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The “Technically Human” ebook is also available on Apple Books . Click HERE.
Ricki is also a contributor to the Writers Anonymous short stories anthology, “Matters of Life and Death, Stories on the Brink.” CLICK HERE.
The newest Writers Anonymous short stories anthology, “Stories Well-Traveled,” is now available on Amazon.
It is a collection about the different paths Writers Anonymous has traveled, both real and imagined, and how, through these stories, we have stayed connected.
CLICK HERE.
