Tuesday, June 24, 2014

The Uphill Climb

There are times when you feel like you're just cruisin' along in life.  Things aren't bad; you're just doing your thing.  Kinda like riding a bike on a flat road.  And then you turn a bend and there it is.  The uphill climb.  Seemingly endless.  No break in sight.  The road just keeps going up and up and up.

That's where I'm at.  I'm climbing.  I am schvitzing like crazy climbing up this steep and steady hill. I'm learning a lesson in endurance.  I'm attempting to pace myself because I don't know how long it's going to be before I hit that flat road again.  Or even better, before I reach the downhill portion of this particular journey.  
I can't coast now.  I'm peddling. Slowly.  It's taking all the strength I can muster in my lungs and my legs.  Climb.  Breathe.  Don't stop peddling.  Climb. Breathe.  Peddle. Sweat pours down my face, into my eyes.  It stings. My legs are burning.  My lungs feel ready to explode.  Must keep climbing.  Because I know, the higher I climb, the better the view will be when I reach the top.

1 comment:

Jender Flambe said...

Thank you for the beautifully poetic, existential blues post. I'm going to borrow that last line for my own times of need.

Whenever I wonder what it would be like to know the future, my conclusion is that it would be a terrible curse. If I'm in the midst of a hard time, how devistating would it be to know that something even more harsh is waiting for me down the road? Yes there would be good times to look forward to as well. But knowing what they were in advance would rob them of their delightful surprise... or the satisfaction of achieving something you didn't know you could accomplish. In those respects, I think the core of what is to be human is to be a temporal being - struggling in each moment to do the best we can with the strengths and limitations of who we are at that point in our lives.