All of us aspire to something more or greater. If only I had this or did that. I am working really hard to get this promotion. If only we sold our product to ten more distributors. I wish I could be like her. And so on……
Fueled by our window to the world, on our smartphone through social media, everyone except us seems to be living an exciting life. Full of fancy and whims. With no view inside their daily lives.
We even do this ourselves. Putting pictures from our phones so that others see where we are at or what we are eating. It’s never about washing clothes or putting gas in the car. They’re always about special moments that last only a few hours.
What is misleading about wanting to ascend a mountain to something greater, is that it is always balanced by the sacrifices you are willing to make to get there. There will always be something or many things that you must give up in order to ascend. No one told us that sacrifice needed to be part of our dreams.
Many never consider what will be needed to make the journey. Longing only for their dream to be realized and validated with a picture at a given point in time, taken with their own phone as proof that they made it.
Without a compass to determine our direction, how will we ever know if this is the right mountain to climb? Directionless we simply wander. Never questioning where we are headed or if it fits where we hope to go.
Do mountains understand how hard it can be for us to climb? They will always look disinterested because they know this is not their question to answer. It is ours. Can mountains see if where they sit matches where we want to be? Not really. Mountains never can tell how high we will climb before we get too tired to continue.
Ascending a mountain in life is predicated on subtraction being additive. Some call subtraction , in this context, as being discipline. Others consider it sacrifice that seems too painful, to first consider, but much needed
Sometimes taking us many years for us to understand where we are on this journey. Leaving the decision on what mountain, the height we will climb, and whether we change directions all up to us.