This is Your Problem Now: A Reflection on Avoiding Hard Things
In January, I took up rock climbing.
If you know me personally, this is just as much a surprise to myself as it may be to you. For one, I have a deep fear of heights. Just ask my friend who had to ride a ski lift with me last fall. Precariously dangling my legs fifty feet above a mountain slope offers me the always-welcome thrill of a panic attack.
Secondly, I have the upper body strength of a boiled gluten-free noodle. I’m told that correct climbing actually involves more leg strength than arms, but tell my aching arms that after a climbing session—the ache lasts for days. I also don’t claim to be climbing correctly, but cut this novice indoor rock climbing girl some slack, plz and thx.
While I have no plans to scale El Capitan, I somehow find myself with a climbing gym membership to my name.
During a climbing session a couple months ago (back when being in a crowded public place was A Very Normal Thing), I tried a new bouldering route that offered a bit more of a challenge than the baby beginner’s level.
The wall was at a slight angle, adding the extra pull of gravity at my slightly-tilted back. A minor traverse was also part of the route, which required reaching further than I was used to with the other beginner’s routes. To make it to the final two holds, you had to push up off your leg, let go of the current hold you were gripping to for dear life, and grab onto the higher hold. Miss the hold, and you could potentially fall.
Granted, you’re not falling to your death or even an injury if you play your cards right (aka falling 101: don’t put your hands down to catch your fall). This isn’t Free Solo, folks. You’re maybe 7 feet up, and there’s generous padding to cushion any falls that do happen.
But please refer to my initial point: Me and heights do not get along. This includes falling from said heights, no matter how low-risk those falls may be. I wake up with a wildly beating heart when I feel myself falling in a dream just like the next average Joe. I once slipped and fell on a piece of lettuce-gone-rogue in my high school cafeteria. That was scarring enough.
But my fear of falling kept my brain from convincing my limbs to let go and reach for that next hold. I couldn’t make it to the top of the route.
“Let’s go find a new one,” I told my friend—a much more experienced rock climber—in surrender.
“No,” he insisted. “This is your problem now. We’re staying here until you get this one.”
Oh.
As I sat resting my arms and surveying my own personal Everest, I wondered… do I do this in more areas of my life than just indoor rock climbing?
Do I give up and move onto the “easier” thing when a situation presents a challenge that I view as impossible? Am I thank u, next-ing what I perceive to be hard things? And in doing so, what am I missing out on?
Obviously, you can’t become a better climber if you don’t keep trying for the harder route. This applies to pretty much everything in life.
In a way, I have been doing this with my personal writing. What was once a daily, life-giving rhythm has been unceremoniously pushed into the junk drawer, replaced with distractions that masquerade as productivity.
Why?
Simple: writing is hard.
Writing requires sitting down with the problem—what to write? how to tell the story?—and puzzling through it.
It requires patience. It requires brain power. It requires depth. It requires waiting.
Those things make me feel all crunchy inside, so I tend to avoid them. It’s much easier to respond to an email and pretend those 3 minutes of tip-tapping on your keyboard were time well spent.
When it comes to writing, I have been looking at the blank page, scribbling down a few loose words, then moving onto the easier tasks for the day. I rarely simply sit with the blank page, turn on my sad early-2000s British alt-rock, and wait for the words to come.
Awareness is the first step to change, I suppose.
I didn’t finish the challenging route.
Not that session, at least.
I returned a few days later, and in my first try, I reached the top hold.
So here I am, returning to early mornings and coffee dates with the blank page, knowing that it’s time to write again.
And this is my question to you, dear reader: What have you been avoiding? What hard thing has your brain subtly convinced you to avoid? And in doing so, what could you be missing out on?
Maybe today is a good day to do the hard things.
[Photo by Ferdinand Stöhr via Unsplash]
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Ally is a 2014 graduate of Belmont University in Nashville, the city she still calls home. She owns a cat named after C.S. Lewis and buys way too many concert and plane tickets and then writes about it. She believes London is the most magical city in all the world and will defend this position somewhat aggressively. She owns Cadence Copy Studio, a copywriting agency for small business owners. You can check out her music, travel & life musings on her personal blog, Maps & Mochas. Then come say hi — Ally is the one who answers emails (and the one writing this description about herself in third person).