I’m climbing a mountain tomorrow, and amidst the flurry of packing and preparing, I am here, writing and space clearing.
Why do we climb mountains?
A quote from the baul of 2005:
You cannot stay at the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place?
Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below doesn’t know what is above.
One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen.
– Rene Daumal
Most of us climb the mountains of practical things on a day-to-day basis. We trek the worries of money, time, health and appetites. But I think the mountains that we are ultimately faced with — and those we should be bothering with– are the mountains of relationships. People. The most inexhaustible anything in this world.
In the course of painting and drawing everyday, I’ve been moving consciously towards finding beauty in everything– and it’s wonderful — but I find the beauty in people most inexhaustible.
People as our daily mountains. Who are the mountains that haunt you, that give you peace, that leave you inspired and humbled?
I’ve heard the word assault used to refer to climbing a mountain, and I feel it’s misplaced. As opposed to carrying out this task in violence, I say do it with love. Hike it, prepare for it, do a pitstop, then ascend again, but gently, and lovingly. To climb is automatically thought of as difficult, and beautifully so, don’t you think?
And to have this lovingliness in approaching people everyday…wow.
If we truly ask and seek, though, we will know as true that the highest and most overbearing mountain is the one inside us… and maybe this is the one that needs our love most of all.