OVER SEVERAL MONTHS NIGE the Ninja managed to show me how to fly a helicopter while doing other things, countless other things, and, what
was more, to do so with something approaching self-love. These were flying lessons, but I think back on them as life lessons, and gradually there were more good ones than bad.
Good or bad, however, every ninety-minute session in Nige’s Squirrel Dojo left me hooped. Upon landing I’d think: I need a nap.
But first: the debrief.
This was where Nige the Ninja really put me through it, because he sugarcoated nothing. He spoke bluntly and wounded blithely. There were things I needed to hear, and he didn’t care about his tone when he told me.
I got defensive.
He pressed on.
I shot him hate-you-forever stares. He pressed on.
I said, Yeah, yeah, I get it. He pressed on.
I stopped listening.
Poor Nige…He pressed on.
He was, I realize now, one of the most truthful people I’ve ever known, and he knew a secret about truth that many people are unwilling to accept: it’s usually painful. He wanted me to believe in myself, but that belief could never be based on false promises or fake compliments. The royal road to mastery was paved with facts.
Not that he was categorically opposed to compliments. One day, almost in passing, he said that I appeared to lack any…fear. You’re not terribly concerned, if I may say, Lieutenant Wales, with dying.
That’s true.
I explained that I hadn’t been afraid of death since the age of twelve. He nodded once. He got it. We moved on.
