To Climb or Not?

So last night Matt and I do something that we absolutely love. We have pillow talk. Now this is not your normal pillow talk this is thoughts and ideas that cross our minds during the day. So we try to remember those things then talk about it with the other. This has been an amazing way to get to really know each other. I have learned so much about him and from him because of this. Well last night we talked about one thing that made me wonder how others feel.

I have been in two different places in life, the first is that comfortable place that we all settle down into. Marriage, family, comfort, safety, true happiness. It was not until almost two years after my husband passed that I realized that yes I was happy but maybe not as happy as I could have been. Why? Because for me I felt like I stopped climbing the mountain. I found a safe pretty spot to settle into and was good with it. I pushed dreams and goals aside and thought life couldn’t get any better. I never wrote, I was content with where I was in life. I didn’t challenge myself and was good with that.

Now that I have crashed down to the trench and am finally out of that and looking towards the top of the mountain I suddenly have the drive to not just climb back to where I was but to get to the top. To follow my dreams no matter how crazy they are and see the life that God has in store for me. I am excited and nervous but also very scared. I have all the “What if’s” in my head. Just like every other person who is chasing dreams. Yet I push all of those aside and just tell myself that I can only do what I can and the rest I just have to have faith and trust. What I also know is that if I fail, at least I have learned what not to do, and successful people don’t give up. They learn the lesson and they keep going. Finding ways to reach their dreams in ways that they never expected. That is me, I am going to reach my dreams and climb to the top of the Mountain.

Yet as Matt and I laid in bed together and talked the question came up. Why climb? If you are happy and content, why not settle at the bottom of the mountain? Most of us like small, simple, safe lives. We settle at the bottom of the mountain or somewhere near the middle and we are content. Yet I have learned that you can still fall at the bottom of that mountain. A trench can still open up and swallow you whole, or a avalanche can come racing down and wipe out everything you have. The bottom of the mountain really is not any safer than the top. His ultimate question to me was if you are happy and content why climb at all? I was speechless, I had no idea how to answer that question. I knew that everything inside me screamed because you have to! But do we really? That answer is no. We don’t. Most of us are good with where we are and what we are doing. We tell ourselves that we are making it not to bad in life and that those big dreams and desires are not really for everyone. We tell ourselves that that person was born with a special talent, or they were born into privilege, or they just happened to get lucky.

The truth could be though that those who seem to have reached the top of the mountain were the ones that kept climbing. Even when someone told them not to. Or when someone told them they were nothing special. They didn’t listen, they still placed one foot in front of the other and they went to work and dug deep to continue to climb. They continued to climb even when society said, now wait one minute, you came from nothing, you may not belong with those on the top. They chose not to listen and climb anyways. Those are the stories we love to hear, those are the stories that they make movies out of. Why? Because someone reached the top of the mountain and they made the climb even when told they shouldn’t. Those are the stories of hope. Those are the stories that we say things like “what dreams are made of.” We call them “fairytales” and “too good to be true.”

In the end it really isn’t any of those things. It is someone who had a dream, and chose to climb the mountain no matter how many times they fell. They would just not give up. Now I know there are millions of people who have climbed and kept climbing and never made it to the top. Yet I wonder if you asked them if it was all worth it, I think they would say yes. They would say that it would crush them to live with the unknown “what if” or “if only” so they were going to climb and work and chase their dreams no matter what. I believe it is because as long as they were chasing that dream, their life had a sense of purpose, and having a sense of purpose is everything. Right?

I would love to hear what you think. Why do you climb the mountain or have you chose to settle and be happy where you are? Either place is not a bad place to be in, I would just like to know. Do you climb or not?

Dee