It’s been a busy summer. It’s been raining and I’ve been paddling.

I have been a whitewater kayaker going on 20 years now. It’s an amazing sport. It involves athleticism, nature, challenge, and camaraderie. And adventure. Every river is different and each is different depending on the level (the amount of water flowing).

While you can simply go straight down a river, to me, much of the fun and beauty of paddling is navigating down a river, playing your way down, picking your route as you go, moving from location to location, hopping from eddy to eddy.

An eddy is located behind an obstruction in the river, often a rock. The rock or other impediment creates an interruption in the flow of the river and creates a different space behind it – an eddy. The eddy is where the flow has been altered. Many eddies are calmer spaces and can almost appear as if the water is not moving at all. It is this calmness that allows an eddy to be a perfect resting spot as you are going down the river. It gives you a chance to catch your breath, to think, to plan your next moves, to celebrate how much fun you just had and/or to recalibrate after a challenging rapid.

There are so many ways in which whitewater kayaking is a perfect metaphor for the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and healthy masculinities work I do. There are multiple ways to get to where you are going, some are relatively easy, some are as gnarly as can be, and many ways in between. It is more effective and more fun when you do this with other people. It isn’t always apparent where to go next in my work and on the river. I consider where I am in the process, the flow of the river or dialogue, make a decision and move forward. Sometimes it feels hard and challenging, and almost always the best way through is to lean in (or as we say on the river, “lean forward, paddle hard”).

Eddies are also a great metaphor. Along the way it is critical to find places to take stock, catch your breath, and assess next steps. One of the amazing things about sitting in an eddy is that the water flowing past you can be really quite turbulent and yet most eddies are comparatively quite calm. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have to do anything, but it typically does mean you aren’t working quite as hard. However, at some point you have to get back into the main current, so you pick your route and you commit to it. Hesitation leaving an eddy is rarely a smart move, in the same way that we have to be bold and commit to our next moves in DEI and healthy masculinities work. We may get upended, and we roll with it, learn from it, and become better at what we are doing.

That last piece is critical. The more we engage in DEI and healthy masculinities the easier it gets to keep engaging. Please note, I did not say it is easy. I said easier. We develop new skills, become increasing competent, more conscious. In many ways what we are doing is developing muscle memory in our heads, hearts, and bodies around how to engage in this work. There are always new challenges, and we build on our past experiences. Just like in kayaking. We learn and grow.

I remember when I first started paddling there were sections of river, that I now find quite easy, that were intimidating. Over time those sections became easier. Rocks that used to upend me, well now, my body simply knows how to react and does so, sometimes automatically. And the best advice I got then that holds true in some many ways both on the river and off – lean forward, paddle hard.