We are a world of people committed to making life easier. Every day we all see new inventions, new ideas, new innovations that seek to solve some phenomena we consider to be a difficulty. Gadgets to get us to work quicker, entertain us better, help us get to sleep, help us stay awake, put our minds at ease, keep us skinny, keep us pretty. What began as a desire to provide for ourselves, and those we care about, a greater measure of security in our daily lives has been taken to an almost absurd level and has taken away from us what it means to be people.
When is the last time you really had to work hard for something on a daily basis? When is the last time you had to fight for something in the small space of a moment in time, where you had to dedicate all of your being to the task at hand? When is the last time that you worked so hard at something, devoted every fiber of your heart mind and soul, that you couldn’t hear someone five feet behind you screaming your name?
We don’t climb, and help others to climb, so we can have big biceps, six-pack abs, and cool stories to tell when we go out at night. We don’t climb to get into magazines, look cool, or chase numbers. Don’t get us wrong, pushing to a new level is one of the most amazing feats in this sport, but it’s an amazing feeling because of the accomplishment, not because of the feather in your cap. We don’t climb because it’s a conversation starter, or because we’re bored, or because it’s easy.
We climb because it’s hard. We climb because on the wall, rock or plywood, when we push our limits, everything falls away. We climb for those moments when it’s just simply us and what we are capable of. Because in that moment, throwing for the top out, pulling through the crux, placing that piece of gear, firing for that hold, it’s hard. Because it feels harder than anything we’ve ever felt before and whether we hit it or not, we know that when it came down to it, something was important enough to us that we’d rather risk a fall than give up and let go. Something was so important that we let it take all of our focus, all of our energy, and we actually TRIED.
This is what we are missing day to day, and this is what climbing can be for every one of us. It’s great exercise, it’s great fun with friends, and it’s an all around amazing time. And we certainly don’t have to come in every day and scream our heads off trying to pull as hard as possible, but these are sentiments that every climber that has come into this gym even a handful of times has felt. This is why we want people to push their limits and themselves. Not because we want people to get to a certain number, but because we want them to get to THEIR number, their ceiling, and then punch right through it. Because seeing someone climb their first 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, or 7, they get to have physical proof that when it got hard, they shined through.
So ask us how to get there. Read this blog, talk to a staff member, and bother as many people as you want. This blog and our staff, we’re all dedicated to you pushing your limits. To helping you get to that place where there could be one hundred people screaming beta as loud as possible, all you hear is the beat of your own heart, the sound of your own your breath, the ebb and flow of your existence. Because when we see you after it, sweaty, broken and tired, we’ll be waiting with the high five.
Until then, climb hard.
- red.
