alicehafer

Recently I took a short break in Ten sleep. After being locked up from Covid and set free, Ten Sleep represented a shift in my climbing, or maybe a shift in my universe. A new sort of humility came with a lack of expectations and proper training. Instead of worrying myself about the past, I came only with the thoughts of a new future of whatever my body could do for me.

Instead of failing, I found that I climbed better than ever. Even better perhaps than I climbed last year after intense training preparing me for harder climbs. It didn’t really make any sense to me.

But instead of being overly happy and ego-satisfied, instead my sends felt like small victories, just tiny pleasant moments. The real victories felt like the processes that challenged me, and the sense of progression.

My confidence to onsight was poor and my nerves were shaky. New partners, new challenges, and the unknown intimated me on every new climb. Yet by the end of two weeks, it was not important to plan, like I had in the past. Whether I would onsight something or fail had no importance, because neither outcome had any particular significance, in the long or short run.

This discovery, that all climbing, inherently doesn’t actually matter, has changed my perspective greatly. Instead, what matters is to set a challenge for yourself, and to give it a good effort, not a half-effort but one that makes you proud. This, rather than any outcome, is the thing that brings me the most joy. Understanding that I made choices to satisfy my best effort, rather than my best grade.

I spend the majority of my trip reading a book about creativity, expecting it to give me advice on how to go about writing a book. But instead the book seemed to be about life in general. About living a life that is full of creativity in every aspect.

It did not give me advice on how to craft an interesting chapter or structure a book, but rather how to chase a full-ness and curiosity that life offers in every realm.

This creativity and curiosity was reflected in many of my new decisions, climbing with new partners, trying new climbs. Letting your partner dictate the day’s plan and seeing what happens. For once, letting go of control. It’s incredible how this can lead you somewhere new and somewhere that offers you more than what you initially planned.

In life, especially now, it seems that our plans are nearly invalid. The world is full of unpredictable outcomes and, really, that is the only thing we can truly trust to be true. I am challenging myself now to think more creativity about my life. Still making plans, but trying to be ready for anything. Chasing curiosity more than concrete futures. Learn more about yourself and focus less on the outcome you desire. In a conversation with a friend we remarked to each other, “but growth is so exhausting!” Yes, always exhausting but somehow invigorating all at once. For the first time in my climbing life, I don’t fear ice cream, I take extra rest days just because, I skip a day on my project to belay a friend and I don’t even pick a project at all before going somewhere – risks I could never imagine before, but somehow bring me to a place that I could never plan to get to.