I have a friend who likes to climb mountains. I've never seen as happy as when she's up on a snowfield, gaining elevation, leaving the pressure of the world below as the air thins.
I tried to climb a short way up a mountain with her this year. I was excited, with a new pack, plenty of energy, and the confidence that I'd make 10,000 feet that morning.
At 9,500 feet, I gave up.
The thing that sucks about climbing mountains is the tiny, microscopic steps you have to make. Over and over and over and over again. Each step is so tiny that you focus on getting to that small patch of dirt, and then that rock, and then that spot where someone fell and made a big dent in the snow, and then that small patch of dirt. When you look up, you can't even count the small patches of dirt or dents or rocks between you and the next hill, and you know there's six more hills after this one before you get to your destination. The whole experience makes you feel utterly small, insignificant – and in my case – angry.
People have probably used mountains as metaphors since the dawn of language. They are mighty, unbelievable monuments to magma and explosions and upheavals frozen in time, freezing hot. Steam vents in glaciers. Avalanches and granite. Needless to say, the imagery is vivid.
One of the most cliched metaphors surrounding mountains is "Progress". Progress like mills, railways, and steamships – "the pinnacle of industry". Progress like telegraphs, network switches, and sattelites – "summitting the challenges of time and space". The past is always at the bottom of the mountain, and we've just climbed to the peak. Except not really, there's another one that's taller and more expensive and due out in February – free shipping if you back the Kickstarter!
The problem with "progress" is the myth of the summit. Most things in life can never be "summitted". They can become better – they can be "mastered" – but they can never reach the perfection of the summit, per se. I think of Jiro Ono, the Japanese sushi chef of Sukiyabashi Jiro, who has worked tirelessly to perfect his craft for over seventy years. To me, he has reached the summit of sushi. I doubt he would say the same.
The world is getting a little crazy. Public figures spout nonsense and hate, politicians throw off the chains of common decency, and international corporations outstrip the GDP of most countries. Often it seems like the world is slipping backward, not forward. Where's the "progress"? Aren't things supposed to be getting better? What happened to kindness? Why are people getting shot for their skin color or wearing a hoodie or having a taillight out? Why are burkinis disallowed on nude beaches? Why aren't the tech companies solving the world's problems? I'm getting angry again.
We're never going to summit humanity. That's utopic nonsense. Focusing on the summit keeps us from the one thing that can save us from ourselves while we climb.
I sat there, at 9,500 feet, angry.
I had asked my friend how she kept going. She explained that it took getting into a rhythm, a zone, a meditative place where all that mattered was putting the next foot in front of her. Breathing. She channeled the pain and the frustration into keeping in the zone, and stayed there hill after hill after hill. Breathing.
I didn't figure out the zone that day. I gave up, and had fun sliding down the mountain and hiking to the trailhead and heading back to camp and eating dinner. But I've been thinking about it ever since.
If there's no summit to humanity, then have we been breathing?