submission: your body
Part of what keeps us climbers moving is dreaming about what doesn’t yet exist, what hasn’t already happened. Future muscles, future mountains.
Those accomplishments, we tell ourselves, are an expression of who we reeeeally are. I am not me as I am today—scared, inexperienced, short limbed and weak—I would rather be the future me. The stronger, braver, more accomplished me. Waiting to become myself.
The price of accomplishment is overcoming our current selves. A conquering executed by willpower, discipline and repeated effort. Defying earthly physics, becoming both hotter and cooler with each harder grade.
When I look around, the strategy I see for becoming the future now is mostly the angry chef method. You know, the spaghetti strategy. The I-will-throw-my-body-at-all-these-walls-and-see-which-one-i-stick-to method! Sometimes you stick and it’s the future, and sometimes your finger nails and toes scrape all the way down the wall to the dust and dirt whence you arose and you’re back as the present, unaccomplished.
This is where you expect me to tell you nicely but firmly to stop feeling sorry for yourself and get right back up and throw your un-done noodle right back on the wall!
But I won’t.
This is where I say,
SUBMIT
I want you to roll over like a happy puppy and show me exactly how adorable you are today. I want to see your belly and pet your soft arms and I want to give you treats. I want to sing you a song in my kitchen about how your height is perfect, your muscles are perfect and how your current ability is perfect. I want to watch you enjoy yourself exactly as you are today having met none of your goals. I want you to submit to the grade you can climb perfectly today, and I want to watch you climb it in joy and perfection.
If I have to, I will remind you exactly where your limits are. I might seem cruel, and I am, I don’t mind. This discipline is love that will keep your body intact and uninjured. This patience for the present will ripen your dreams til they fall in your lap perfectly in season, so sweet.
Submit to your current body, submit to your current skills, submit to your current fears. Study the prison walls. There is a hidden corner and a tiny door and a golden key I left labeled Love🔑