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| repeat after me |
Those faithful few of you who've been following my blog will be aware that I like to do a little rock climbing now and again...
Some of you no doubt consider this to be dangerous, and perhaps question my sanity...some question my morality...some even question my intelligence (raising immediate concerns over their own)...
I understand that climbing might appear to be dangerous, or scary (very different things)...and indeed sometimes it is one, or other, or in the worst case, both of those things.
And yet here I am, unharmed and generally healthy, and largely unscathed by my adventures.
One life lesson I have learned from my crazy, stupid, ethically dubious escapades, is the value of the old Hitchhiker's Guide admonition, Don't Panic.
It's all too easy, when standing at the bottom of a steep, intimidating rock face (or indeed when facing any steep, intimidating life challenge), to let your mind rush off quantifying all the possible negative outcomes...
What if I fall off? What if it's too hard? What if I get injured? What if my equipment fails?
What if I can't find my way? What if the weather turns? What if I drop something important?
However, if you rein your mind in from this unhelpful, counter-productive line of thought, and instead keep the Don't Panic mantra firmly in mind, you can simply focus on doing the next thing...
The next thing isn't so scary, it's just a couple of easy-ish moves up to that ledge...and oh, now I can reach that juggy hold above, and there's a little nook where I can squeeze a toe in to stand up on...and phew, there's a big hold inside that crack which I can lean back and rest on...
...and before you know it, you find you've reached the safer ground at the top, and...
Lo and behold - none of those possible negative outcomes actually transpired!
When you think about it, even if any one of those negative potentials had happened, it would seem highly unlikely that another one would too...and actually, they're all manageable singly...
I have 623 outdoor routes and problems logged in my log book, and out of all of those, I only had a negative outcome once - I fell off a little boulder, back in May 2012, and broke my leg...but I only had 3 weeks off work, and I was climbing again within 9 weeks.
The same can be seen to be true of life in general, self evidently through the observation that we're all still here...despite all the craziness, the trauma, the disaster, the tragedy, the misery, which we've all experienced to some degree at some time...despite all of that, we're all still here.
Whatever has befallen us, we all got through it every single time, and everyday life eventually resumed in accordance with it's doggedly determined insistence on continuing to tick along, regardless.
That says something about the resilience of life, the innate, fundamental property of nature that is being alive. There's life everywhere on this planet, and it's clear that life hangs on in the face of anything and everything.
So when facing the daunting, the intimidating, the scary, the dangerous, or the unknown (or any combination thereof), really focus on the basic wisdom in that old cliché...
Don't Panic!
Just focus on what's in front you, do the next thing...you will come through it, you will survive, life will go on...it's the way the world works.
There's no avoiding it.
Thinking of you all, bro'...
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