Fear, Exhaustion, and Desire

Helen Keller wrote, "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all."

I have begun a journey- not only of body, but of mind and spirit. The allure of climbing has tugged at me since early childhood, which would cause me to climb the shelves, the refrigerator, and various appliances in the house. I could barely walk, but even then I wanted to be higher. Later in my childhood, trees, and other boyhood obstacles served this purpose. I was never the most brazen child; I knew fear, and what the result of my actions might be if I didn't respect it. However, I continued to feel a pull to climb. Only second to the school art room, the local rock gym, and boulders around town, were my sanctuaries. However, the mountains around my home town did not call to me to climb them, just only to observe. Perhaps I was lazy, but I would like to say it was more out of respect that I did not climb them until I myself was ready.

Now they do call to me. They seem to consume my thoughts in the way that art and flying do. They seem to draw me close, a dangerous but necessary communion with nature and a direct confrontation of inner being. I am entirely unsure where this relationship with nature will go. I only know that I must see it to its end. This strange force, this strange phenomenon -- I call it anti-gravity. It is a pull stronger than the one keeping us on safe ground. It is the unknown force that drives us to continue upward at our own peril, defying death that is one slip away. Few things have pulled me in this way. In spite of fear and exhaustion, I continue to rise, with some strange desire to continue to dare the death at my doorstep to leap out and take me. A mountain seems to have its own gravitational force moving upward, that some of mankind cannot resist.

While death finds us all, to truly live is a choice. Crouching in the shadow of fear, hiding from that which comes to us all, is only a decision to deny any meaningful existence we can have. Without confronting death, we cannot experience life. Our life's end will come, and we know not when that will be, or how. So let us consume the marrow of life with a fervor unrelenting and without hesitation. Let not the threads of fear control us, but remind us of one thing: we are alive, and this time is ours to use, ours to bring us closer to truth, closer to the mystery of our very being. Let this life be a testament to the human spirit and the fire within. Let the flames of our being temper the world around us. Life is short, so spend it wisely.