Why Wait?

Starting at 59 (or even later)

First, one of my favorite quotes:

There is a sweetness in surrendering to something you will never be good at, and still finding pleasure in doing it.  — Sue Bender, "Everyday Sacred”

I love that one because it kind of sums me up. I love trying stuff — so I do a lot of things, and will probably never be an expert at any of them. But, oh, the sweetness! The pleasure! Thanks, Sue. :-)

During the Christmas holidays of my 59th year (many years ago), my son Alex Honnold (maybe the most famous rock climber in the world; see the Oscar-winning documentary, Free Solo) was home with an injured arm. He couldn’t climb. That was my chance.

For years, I’d been seeing little articles in magazines and newspapers, small mentions of things he’d been doing ‘out there,’ wherever it was he went in the world when he “went climbing.” I didn’t know what that meant. I wanted to find out. And most of all, being Mom, I wanted to find out how he and his friends kept themselves safe out there — or as safe as possible.

So I asked him to take me to the indoor rock-climbing gym where he trains when he’s home. I figured I’d learn the vocabulary (he’d tried to explain it all to me, but it’s a highly specialized jargon and I had never seen any of it in action, so none of it ever made sense to me), find out how to tie some knots, maybe try climbing a half a wall and I’d go home happy, with some more understanding of what my son did all the time.

Not exactly how it played out.

We did go to the gym that afternoon, and he showed me how to tie in (complicated, at first), how to belay (terrifying!), and taught me some of the vocabulary (still learning). But then things changed.

I’m from NYC, and I’ve been up in a lot of really, really tall buildings. My stomach has always insisted on tying itself into knots when I’m up high, in some exposed place, looking over the edge. Knowing that, I ‘knew’ that climbing wasn’t for me. Afraid of heights, as most people say.

But that day, after he’d taught me some of ‘the ropes,’ I tied in, checked our knots, stepped up to the artificial climbing wall, grabbed a handhold, and started upwards.

Somewhere in the middle of that wall, my brain finally registered the fact that the strongest, most capable climber maybe in the whole world was at the other end of my rope. Controlling it skillfully. If my weak fingers let go and I flew into the air, I knew that I wouldn’t fall. I’d dangle right where my hand or foot had slipped off, held in place by my son’s incredibly capable hands.

I climbed to the top, turned around, looked down…and flashed him a huge, relaxed smile!

Another myth, busted.

It’s not the height that people are afraid of, at all! It’s falling off that height. Once you know that can’t happen, that fear just goes away, sloughed off by your psyche, like all those other childish fears you let go of as an adult. It wasn’t what you thought you feared at all. And climbing has taught me that most other ‘fears’ can be talked away, too.

Since then, over a decade later, I’ve had life-altering adventures on mountains, walls, ledges, crags, fjords…the kinds of adventures I never could have imagined, before. Rock climbing has changed my life in so many ways that make me envy those who start younger. I started when I was in what the French call my “third age.” Past middle age. It’s hard to build the required muscle mass, at this age. I work pretty hard at it, but I still can’t do a real pull-up. But then, I’ve seen interviewed elite climbers say that you don’t ever have to do that, up on the rock wall. So there’s hope.

Ah, the “sweetness,” the “pleasure”!. . .

So, about that dream of yours…. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re too old, or too anything else, to go for it. You’re the only one who can decide that. After you try it.

But climbing is only one part of my life. Stay tuned for more in our next thoughtletter visit.

Thanks for joining me here. I hope you enjoyed my Thoughtletter enough to share it with friends who might also enjoy it. And I’d love hearing from you — an adventure is always better when shared!