On a scorching August day, running along the Hudson I passed a sign: "Runners: Free T-shirt for Interview."

I stopped and agreed to be interviewed. A sports apparel company was interviewing runners for a commercial. They had constructed a small plywood hut with the cameras inside that was air-conditioned. They had me wear a shirt over the one I had been running in to cover their competitor's logo.

The interviewer sat facing me just to the side of the camera, clipboard in hand. He perfunctorily asked questions, which I answered, not sure if I should look at him or the camera. The questions were good, along the lines of why I ran, what about it I enjoyed, how running made me feel, how I prepared for a big run, etc. He was doing his job and hardly looked up to look at me.

Until my answer to one question. He almost dropped the clipboard and did drop the unemotional tenor. He looked at me and said, "I've been asking the same questions for two days straight, hearing the same answers over and over. But your answer I haven't heard, and frankly it's the best one I've heard."

His question:

Distance runners hit a wall, maybe it's at twenty miles, maybe going up a big hill. What do you do to get past the wall?

My answer:

My life is good. It's not always easy, though. The things that are hard I don't always have control over. But getting through the challenges is what makes me who I am.

The reason I run is for the wall.

He asked me to continue so I did:

The first fifteen miles are to push myself so that at miles eighteen, nineteen, and twenty, I find out who I am. If I run ten miles I get exercise, which is nice. After fifteen miles, my legs say stop. Then my lungs. Then my mind. By mile twenty, every part of me except an inner voice says to stop. That voice is me. Everything else is secondary -- legs, lungs, other thoughts. I run to challenge myself to find that voice so I can learn who I am and be myself under whatever conditions.

I've learned to enjoy something more challenging than most of what life throws at me. Everything else is fun in comparison.

I thought that was why people ran. It's not fun like a team sport.

In any case, they were out of free shirts in my size.

By the second day of Noble Silence at last week's five-day meditation retreat, the mental static of everyday thoughts had mostly passed.

During the 9am-11am session we switched techniques from focusing on breathing to scanning the body for sensations and letting them pass. After one or two scans I found I could hardly sense anything subtler than, say, my shirt on my arm. Frustrating.

Another scan brought me back to my last retreat, a twelve-day in 2007. I realized then I was holding tension in my chest muscles and how, until released, that tension blocked my ability to sense subtle sensations near that muscle. This time my chest muscles weren't tense; my back muscles were.

Later I realized how tense my whole back, shoulders, and neck were. At this point I could only sense the tension in my back muscles around the bottom of my rib cage. Sensations from areas around the inner muscles were hidden by the tension in the outer ones.

With awareness and calm focus, I could feel the outer muscles relax. It felt great. I moved my back to experience the relaxation. That motion revealed tension higher up previously masked by tension in lower muscles. As I relaxed each higher muscle, I could sense the tension in the next set of muscles.

That session ended at 11 for lunch. After lunch I restarted in the pagoda, where I had a solitary room so quiet I could hear my own breath. I could focus better than in the group room I was in before.

I restarted at 1pm. Muscle by muscle, as I moved my attention up my back, I relaxed each next muscle up, feeling good and revealing tension in the muscles above them. Tension vanished. Flexibility increased. I could breathe unhindered. My chest opened wide. It felt like someone replaced muscles that felt like old, brittle, dry rubber bands with... I don't know, like clouds. I think I started to laugh it felt so free. As each muscle relaxed, I could feel the sensations on my skin near the muscle and within the muscle. I felt good.

I moved my attention to my shoulders and neck. The tension in my neck was harder to release, but with motion to highlight its precise location and working from the outside in, it went away. I would focus on a muscle, sense the tension, move my head or back to locate the specific muscle holding the tension, and with patience relax it and move to the next muscles.

When I left the clock said 2:15. BAM! I had sat for an hour and fifteen minutes. Longer sessions mean deeper progress, which is good.

The next group sitting was 2:30, so I only had fifteen minutes' break.

I walked -- almost bounded because of my energy -- to the path in the woods by the pagoda. No one else was there. I felt so good I had to express it. I stretched my arms out wide, like Julie Andrews on the Sound of Music poster. A straight, male version, anyway.I would have been embarrassed if anyone saw, but I had to. You have to let that out.

Then I remembered a picture of a girl I know jumping for joy on the beach. She's in a bikini, mid-jump with her arms and shoulders back, her legs back too, like she's jumping forward, and a big smile. I thought, "That's how I feel. I want to jump like that because that's how I feel." So I looked around. Nobody. Good. So I jumped like her.

I jumped for joy!

Jumping felt great. Not just because it's fun, but because it expressed exactly how I felt. And it made me feel better to do it. Feeling better made me want to jump more, which made me feel better. So I jumped a few more times in a few different ways. I could feel my heart beat stronger with the exercise.

I was jumping for joy! When had I jumped for joy before? Had I ever? How often do people jump for joy? Had I been risking going my whole life without it? When would I ever had expected the motivation to come from sitting in a dark room alone for an hour and change?

Meditating later that afternoon, I continued my pattern of finding and relaxing tense muscles, reaching increasingly inner, protected ones. I have been trying yoga for a couple months with modest progress. This meditation made something about yoga click: I was trying to stretch muscles by pushing against the resistance. This technique was different: stretch to highlight the position of the tension, then, once aware of it, mentally relax the muscle to let the tension out.

Before, when tension kept me from doing a yoga pose I would relax my form to go farther, even though I wasn't doing it right, only as best I could, evading the tension. Now I saw the point was to maintain the form to highlight the tension, hold it, and be aware of it, that being the only way to know what to release.

I left the meditation hall to do some yoga poses. It was like I was doing it for the first time with the realization that the point of the poses wasn't to challenge me, it was to reveal the tension. A couple poses I breezed past where I used to have to stop.

But now I'm getting past the jumping for joy part of the story. I could go on about awareness, discipline, focus, letting go, and other meditation stuff, but the jumping was the remarkable part this time.

(Note: less than a week later I found myself jumping for joy at a Yankees game. Maybe I do it more than I thought without realizing...)

[In response to posts on the value of books]

I used to view books like Mette and Brandon. Books reflected who I was, they added to my home, let people know more about me, were good to have for quick reference, etc. I went through an experience that changed that. It started innocently enough. I decided to get rid of only the most useless books I had. The ones I would never miss and had for no good reason in the first place. Looking at my shelves it was easy to figure out those from the ones worth keeping. Actually there were some borderline ones. I decided to be conservative so I kept all the borderline ones. I still got rid of a good portion of my books.

Some time later I found, as expected, I didn't miss any of the books I got rid of. Unexpectedly I realized that without the disposed-of books, the formerly borderline books didn't seem so worth keeping as before. I decided I had been too conservative and got rid of some of the previously borderline books. As I got rid of them I found some previous keepers were on the border. Staying conservative, I kept all the new borderline books.

Some time later I found, as expected, I didn't miss any of the books I got rid of. Unexpectedly I realized that without the disposed-of books, the formerly borderline books didn't seem so worth keeping as before. I decided I had been too conservative and got rid of some of the previously borderline books. As I got rid of them I found some previous keepers were on the border. Staying conservative, I kept all the new borderline books.

In case you didn't notice, I repeated the last paragraph. In real life iterated several times over the course of a couple years, always selling the books to Strand. I now have a few books, mostly reference books like a dictionary, thesaurus, and Strunk and White.

The experience led me to many unexpected discoveries

• I missed the gotten-rid-of books less than I expected, if at all
• My attachments to many other things decreased from the experience
• I used the library a lot more. No matter how many books I had, the library always has more
• I came to understand my attachments to books, especially specific books I thought I couldn't part with
• I continued to read as much as ever
• My apartment has more space for other things
• I found differences I had been unaware of between a physical book and the concepts the book communicates

The more important a book was to me, the more I learned about myself in letting go of my attachment to it. Which leads me to the biggest thing I learned from the experience: I had earlier viewed getting rid of books only as losing something; I now see the flip side, which is what I gained: freedom, both physical and mental.

Not that this is supposed to be deep or anything. It's the same freedom I get from letting go of attachments to anything, but books were so important to me it was a lot of freedom.

Expressions like Brandon's and Mette's, as much as I remember having them and with all due respect, would be backwards and counterproductive to my life. I understand and respect their views, of course, and I'm sure their books contribute to their lives. My father,
a history professor, continues to amass books and I recognize people look at things differently. I've just never written up this experience, and I wanted to share an alternative perspective.

Come to think of it, having heard my experience, my brother-in-law is starting to give me his books to sell to Strand too. We call the process "putting the books back into circulation."

Friday night I was out with a few friends in the East Village. At the end of the night it was time to go home. Leaving the last bar I started walking home. One guy suggested a slice of pizza, then we could split a cab home. I didn't want to pay cab fare at all, but everyone was going so why not.

Walking in the pizza place, I noticed a couple girls at an in-store cash machine with one of those giant keg-shaped cans of Heineken. After a few moments at the counter ordering pizzas I happened to glance toward the ATM. The girls were gone and there was a $20 bill sitting in the machine!

I picked up the bill and showed it to my friend, "Check it out, free $20!" My rule is if I find something identifiable, I should try to return it, but cash I can keep. Then I realized I could identify the girls by that giant Heineken can.

I walked out and saw them and that beer can down the block a ways. By the time I caught up with them, they had walked up a couple steps to their building and were about to walk in.

I tapped one on the shoulder, they turned, and I said "Hey, were you in the pizza shop just now?"

Before describing the interaction, I should mention I will occasionally talk to someone on the street I don't know and would say they generally react positively. My friend Sebastian pointed out that if you approached someone to return a wallet they dropped, you'd expect them to be gracious and appreciative. Well, a wallet is just money. If you're a good person offering your time, shouldn't you expect the same graciousness and appreciation?

I have come to expect this gratitude and appreciation since my street interactions tend to go well. This time I took for granted I'd get it since I actually was offering them something they'd lost, though they didn't know it yet, so I was surprised to see their looks of "Who is this and why is he bothering us?". I think they thought I was trying to pick them up.

So they answered my question of if they had been in the pizza shop with a no. They were being unfriendly to a guy they'd never met trying to do them a favor.

I said "Are you sure?" They said "Yes." I asked if they were sure three more times, the last time really dragging out the "suuuurrrre" to give them every chance to say they could have been there.

After the fifth time they said they couldn't have been in the pizza shop I pulled out the twenty, showed it to them, and said loudly "Cause you left $20 in the cash machine!", turned, and left!!

As I walked away I heard "That's our money, bitch!"

"Ha!" I thought. They just told me five times it couldn't have been theirs when I was trying to do them a favor. What can I say? They convinced me it wasn't them.

I walked back the the pizza shop and said to my friend, all smiles. "The coolest thing just happened."

He said "Yeah, I know, you gave the money back," crestfallen, like it's not that great a deal to give money away. So I showed him the $20, told the story, we laughed at the expense of people acting unfriendly for no reason, and everyone's evening ended positive.

The Beginning

It began last year with a scene in Motorcycle Diaries where the lead character did something that led me to wonder if I could do the same. I mentioned my thoughts to a few friends. Only one, Dave, said let's do it. (What "it" is, I'll get to below)

We scheduled it for June 15. A trip to Rome delayed that. Rescheduling was a challenge. Thursday it seemed like there was too much left unplanned to do it this weekend. I said if we postpone we'll just be in the same state one month later. So we said Damn the torpedoes, let's do it Saturday.

The Day Of

Saturday I woke up at 8am and walked over to Dave's place. He met me downstairs. We walked down to the Hudson and up to the 39th Street ferry terminal.

We took the ferry across the Hudson to Port Imperial, New Jersey, walked north to a pier that felt about right. It was roughly across from 60th Street.

As planned, we then threw our shirts and shoes in a trash can so we were in just our shorts, climbed over a fence, into the water AND SWAM ACROSS THE HUDSON RIVER TO MANHATTAN!

Ho Lee Shit!

We swam across the fucking Hudson River.

We had no backup or plan. Getting in the water was eerie. I'd never done anything like this. Were there rules about this? Was I going to bash myself against these rocks? Would the current carry me out to sea?

People walking along the pier stopped as we climbed in to ask what we were doing. "Swimming across the Hudson, of course." "Have you done this before?" "No, we're just doing it."

We had no idea what would happen. We had no idea if it was legal. I had heard that a drowning person in panic would push an untrained person down to save himself, so we agreed each of us was on his own with the river.

Maps on the web make it look like about a mile across. We couldn't estimate the current. The air and water temperatures were perfect. The web said the city declared the water safe for human recreation and, in fact, sponsors swims in the Hudson (though never across).

It took about an hour of swimming. Dave neglected to tell me until afterward that he had experience in open water swimming, when I realized in retrospect his swimming form looked remarkably good. The current took us a mile downstream.

Not many boats went by while we swam, although a giant Norwegian Cruise boat had been tugged in while we were on the ferry to Jersey. If we were in the water when that thing went by, no one would have noticed it totally destroying us. The only boat that went close enough to interact with us, not counting wakes that hit us, was a guy on a kayak with an outrigger. Boy was he confused to see us. Dave yelled out to him, "Hey, have you seen our kayak? We lost it. It's big and long and blue. We paddled in from England," which didn't resolve his confusion. But it was fun for us.

Dave had gotten two waterproof disposable cameras so we were taking pictures the whole time (I'll probably post them somewhere sometime). We took a picture of the kayak guy. Before us he probably felt special as the smallest boat out there.

We reached Manhattan about 40th Street, at the end of a pier where the Circle Line docks. People saw us and started gathering around. We couldn't talk to them because we were on a ledge under the pier and they were over it. I cut myself a few times climbing on the concrete and Dave slipped and almost fell from the slippery moss on the concrete. We walked to the land end of the pier and climbed up the rock wall to the main landing.

People reacted extremely positively to these two guys woo-hooing and high fiving each other. They couldn't believe we did it -- even the people who saw us swim in and climb up. Amazing: They didn't believe their own eyes! We got a couple beers and celebrated by cheering, telling interested people about what we did, and answering their questions: Why? How long did it take? Is it polluted? Was it hard? How far is it? etc.

Our adventure wasn't over. We had to walk from 40th Street back to the Village barefoot and shirtless. The one bar we stopped in wouldn't serve us, dammit. My worst injuries are the sore and cut bottoms of my feet from walking city streets and hot asphalt and a sunburn.

We showered, dropped off the cameras to develop the pictures, and went for lunch around 1:30pm. Eventually we went to a rooftop party in the East Village.

Let me tell you, risking your life in a barely-considered, crazy way makes for a great story at a party. The answer to most questions about why we did it were "testosterone."

What I Learned

The two main realizations came when getting in the water and about three quarters of the way across.

Getting in the water it became real. I could easily have done everything up to there on my own. Having Dave helped a lot to actually do it.

Three quarters of the way across I was very tired, realized my plan had a problem, and had a face-to-face-with-myself moment. In particular, since I hadn't swum in years but am nearly in marathon running condition, I figured if I got tired, I could just tread water until my strength was back. But at that point I realized not only was I more tired than I expected, the current was fast enough that if I treaded water too long I could miss Manhattan and end up in the Atlantic.

If you get tired running, you can just sit down and someone can help you. If you get tired in the middle of the Hudson, no one is going to walk past. If I ran out of energy, it could take Dave an hour to get help, by which time my body could be floating by the Statue of Liberty. So not that I was close to panicking, but it was definitely a time when I was face to face with myself. I mean, no one could take a single stroke for me so if I was going to make it it would have to be me doing every stroke.

Not that the swim was "extreme," but a lot of "extreme" things people do are actually planned and structured, which de-extremizes them. If you sky dive, for example, you're doing exactly what someone planned for you. I don't know of anyone who just decided to swim across the Hudson. Yet it's easy. Anyone can do it anytime. I think the simplicity of doing something perceived by so many to be so risky added to the positivity of everyone's responses.

I didn't talk to anyone with a good idea of how to estimate the risk, let alone to quantify it. Everyone except Dave and I thought it was too risky. They all overestimated the risks. But everyone thought it was cool. How many cool things are people not doing for no good reason?

It's so easy to plan to do or think about doing things like this and never do them. On the other hand it's as simple as anything just to do them. Life is best lived just by doing them.

Random Notes

• The scene in Motorcycle Diaries that inspired this is where the main character swims across the Amazon River.

• The river bottom on the New Jersey side is less that six feet deep a couple hundred yards out, but it feels WEIRD to your feet. It has the consistency of guacamole, so you don't want to touch it.
  

• When a power boat goes by even very far away you can hear it under water as if it was next to you, which can freak you out.
  

• Visibility in the water was about twelve inches. The water may not have been polluted, but it was definitely dirty.

• Your mood is great for at least a couple days after swimming across the Hudson River.

• People in New York can see two guys walking barefoot and shirtless on the street and not notice anything unusual.

• When I was starting to worry about making it across I remember thinking I would never want to do this again, but as soon as I was back on land that feeling was gone. I felt like I had conquered the river.

My Note

Worried I might have underestimated the risks, and having told almost no one, including family, about the plan, I wrote the following note just before heading to Dave's in the morning (I didn't tell Dave about it until afterward):

"I'm about to go swim across the Hudson. I suppose there is a chance I'll die. It wasn't suicide if I did. I was loving life. Better to enjoy it fully than not live it how you want."

[In response to some alumni on the Entrepreneurs' mailing list complaining the school wasn't helping alumni enough, proposing a "nuclear option" of talking to the press about it.]

If anyone thinks "we have little to lose" and that the "greatest risk is that nothing will happen anyway" of a process called a nuclear option, they should sit down and think more. If you prepare for war, you'll get it. War means loss of control (to the press, who promotes conflict), factions form, people get hurt, conflict escalates, nobody wins.

I wasn't going to participate, but people are pushing increasingly extreme viewpoints. I am concerned one or two people may decide for everyone they'll take the matter into their hands and complain to the press. Bad idea.

Honestly, I've never seen entrepreneurs complain so much in the face of so much demand. The tone of the discussion is like a bunch of people feeling entitled asking for a government handout. Instead of making things better they complain and organize a protest. Demand is supposed to mean opportunity.

YOU'RE ENTREPRENEURS! SOLVE THE PROBLEM. Meet the demand.

You want a great headline? How about this: "Columbia's B-School Alumni organized the best alumni network and helped catapult their school to the top of the rankings." Just do it! Meet the demand. Organize. BE PRODUCTIVE!

If Columbia's alumni are to be the best it will be because WE ACT the best. Not because we complain the most. Get the ball rolling and the school will fall in line. Others will help you. Frankly, I wouldn't want to work with all the complainers, either. I'd want to work with people who get the job done. If the school gets in your way, succeed anyway.

In the meantime, let's create a mailing list complainers@gsb.columbia.edu. It may get more mail than entrepreneurs@gsb.columbia.edu, but we'll get more done and we'll help the school more.