Talking About Connection
- November 2008
- Hi Steph Simple Living Climb
Steph,
I read your book this weekend. I picked it randomly off the shelf in the store because I’d had such a bad day that all I wanted to do was go eat pizza, drink wine and read about mountains. It could have turned out to be one of the many books I buy and barely read, but instead it totally caught me off guard. I was so moved by it, mostly because I recognized so much of your grappling with much bigger issues than the rock. I just started climbing mountains this summer, and don’t know much about rocks yet, so I didn’t know a lot of the climbing vocabulary as I was reading. But…I do know what it means to realize you are going to give so much of yourself to something that there will undoubtedly be pain, consequences, sacrifices, and a lack of immediate understanding about why, exactly, you are doing it.
At 40 years old I am about to finish law school. I don’t know why I started law school in the first place. I think I was just bored and wanted a long-term challenge. I’m now convinced that it is a “calling.” I am working at the Public Defender’s office and lately I feel the bigness of what I am embarking on. People in need (both my clients and the victims); the politics of courtroom battle; the difference between being right and being persuasive and how so often neither of these seems to correlate with winning; the expectation that you “pay your dues” (a concept I have fought mightily against my whole life)…. It goes on and on. Suffice to say, I am engulfed in this now. I love it, and I share this love with a group of people who are driven, intelligent, committed, eccentric, and who have comfortingly sick senses of humor.
But there is a cost. This changes me in ways that others don’t find comforting. My husband, for one. We remain friends, but marriage hasn’t made it through this adventure and I cannot sufficiently explain why. When you follow intuition like it is the word of god (and maybe it is) you just cannot explain why. Mountain climbing started for me because it felt like a metaphor for what was happening, for what I was choosing to do. On the day my husband and I separated I went on a hike with a friend up a small local hill (I don’t even think it qualified as a mountain technically, but whatever). I didn’t think I’d make it and it felt ridiculous. I wasn’t asthmatic, I wasn’t dizzy. It was just so hard to keep going no matter how slow I walked. I was so weak and so frustrated at feeling weak. I told myself that if I just somehow get to the top of this thing everything will be o.k., but if I quit it will be a self-betrayal I might never get over. I unceremoniously dragged myself to the top and felt nothing but dread of the future. But over the next couple of weeks, as the break-up got more painful and emotions got more out of control, all I wanted to do was climb up hills. I started doing bigger and bigger ones, and all of a sudden, here I am. I’m a mountain climber. I just think better up there with nothing but earth, body and breath. Questions about why I am doing what I am doing, whether it is right, whether it is worth it, can (and sometimes must) drop away. I leave a little more clear that there is Truth somewhere, even if I don’t get to know it right now.
So, anyway, somewhere in this rambling is a “thank you” for putting your stories on paper so that someone like me can feel kinship with a person I don’t even know, doing something I’ve never done. It really makes me feel less alone and more motivated to keep climbing.
Sincerely,
Dana
Dear Dana,
All I can say is “wow.” And “thank you so much!” As you say, the feeling of kinship is one of the most powerful, positive emotions I know. Reading your letter gave me the shivers, and somehow makes me feel a lot of hope.
Thank you for writing. I think a lot of people out there can relate to what you are saying, and it feels great to know you’re not alone in these wild places in life.
xxx Steph
