Where We Meet Mountains

Ascending, just to see who we are

Contemplation:

Let’s start with the opening verse from William Blake’s Gnostic Verses:

“Great things are done when men and mountains meet;

This is not done by jostling in the street.”

We do not achieve great things by ‘jostling in the street’ which in modern terms might be getting embroiled in scrappy online conflicts in the comments section, but by taking on formidable challenges, as symbolised by Blake’s mountain.

Modern comforts are such that we can easily avoid many challenges, especially physical challenges, but in doing so we lose the opportunity to find out who we are and who we can become. The safe and familiar path does not lead to meaningful accomplishments. The mountain demands us to be resourceful in ways that we didn’t know we were capable of.

Our mountains can be found in the most ordinary aspects of our lives, in the things we’re avoiding, or the things we find intimidating. We can create our own mountains in our workout routines or as arbitrary goals to conquer - deliberate challenges to bring about our own ‘great things’.

On the mountain, we’ll encounter setbacks and plateaus but this is where we discover who we are and whether we’re ready to ascend. We only find out by doing the hard things.

“Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” - Jack Kerouac.

Personal Reflection:

There are plenty of challenges for all of us in life, but with modern conveniences and comforts these challenges are less existential and less physical - we no longer need to hunt and gather. The challenges we face these days are more of a social or intellectual nature.

So we have to go and find our own physical mountains. For some people that might be a local Parkrun, for others it might be an IronMan Triathlon. But even a commitment to a daily pushup routine, or a daily walk can be a sufficient challenge to test ourselves, to test our resilience, and give us a chance to be a little heroic - to overcome our resistance and inner doubts.

Setting myself arbitrary physical challenges has become a habitual process after so many years of practice. The triumphs and failings on those mountains are easy to bring to the front of my mind when tackling unrelated challenges in life.

This approach seems to help me personally, and in my imagination I’m having mini-adventures, climbing mini-mountains every day.