As climbers, we’re drawn to singularly challenging tasks. We pour our coffee in the darkness of early morning, while the world enjoys rest. We subject ourselves to the risks of instability, doubt, weakness, and pain for the gleaming truth that each occasion to which we rise may teach us something of ourselves and of our time. We know that movement is worth abandoning stillness; that it’s a blessing; that it’s medicine.
We know that movement brings us onto common ground. And what we see in one another is not simply a common interest, but a common value. Though we bear the weight of only ourselves upon that 4-millimeter edge, we bear its hurt together, to see who we are on the other side and who will join us there.
To facilitate this communion—to both craft an opportunity for its flourishing and support each climber through its difficulty—is the underlying reason we attach holds to the wall. It’s the reason we bump knuckles with new climbers every day. It’s the reason we approach unthinkable tasks and decide that we will, indeed, fulfill them. Because movement—our individual and our collective—is how we know each other.
This is what I’ve learned about what I do.
