I used to climb—a lot. Mountains. In the Rockies. It’s very hard work. The air is thin. The weather is often lousy. Gravity is unrelenting.
One of my favorite things about mountaineering, though, is that you have a lot of time to think. This can be a mixed blessing for the novice climber because you often spend much of your time thinking about how tired and miserable you are.
When I was off the rocks, I spent plenty of my free time reading the classics of alpine literature and realized that the best mountain philosophers had discovered ways to focus their discomfort and flip the pain into something positive. It was one line in particular, and I no longer recall who uttered it, that really resonated with me:
Rather than think about climbing the mountain, think of being lifted up by it.
OK, so it’s a bit of a Zen koan, but that’s what makes it helpful on an eight-hour uphill slog. You keep thinking about it and not the burning in your quads or the pounding in your temples.
No matter how heavy my pack, no matter how deep the snow, no matter how slippery the rocks, that simple phrase kept me going and still serves as inspiration today.
So the question of the day is this: With the economy in the tank, the Dow flatlining and jobs being shed by the thousands, what inspires you to keep going when the going gets tough?
— Jonathan
(Photo of Parry Peak by Gregory Younger)