THE CLIMB BETWEEN. #7

I keep thinking about how easily we convince ourselves that life begins after we get somewhere. After we find the right person. After the dream works. After the money comes. After the pain leaves. After we finally become the person we thought we were supposed to be. So we keep moving. We reach something we wanted for so long, and for a moment, we think: “This is it.” Then somehow, it isn't. Something changes. What we wanted changes. We change. Life changes. And we're moving again. Up. Down. Back to the beginning. Then climbing again. Maybe that's why some moments feel like we're losing, when really, we're simply being taken somewhere we haven't learned how to understand yet. How many times have you looked at your life and thought you were starting over, only to realize later that you were never the same person who started the first time? How many things have you called a failure simply because they didn't take you where you expected to go? And how do you know you're lost if the destination you had in mind was never the destination your life was going to give you? Maybe we spend too much of our lives asking, “When will I finally get there?” When the deeper question might be: “What if there was never a place to get to?” What if every top is only another beginning? What if every bottom is carrying something the top could never teach you? What if the life you're waiting to begin is already happening while you're busy trying to reach it? The wheel keeps turning. The rope keeps moving. And we keep climbing. Not toward some perfect place where nothing changes. But through everything that changes us. Maybe that's what this life is: Not the distance between where we were and where we want to be, but the person we become between the two. And maybe, when it's all over, we won't remember how many times we reached the top. Maybe we'll remember who we became every time we had to climb again.