Post by @paradigmclimbing

I think about this moment A LOT. I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted anything more badly than I wanted to stand on top of this boulder, on this day. By the time I had one final chance on The Riverbed, I had dropped the last move 15 times, was dealing with bicep tendonitis, and had just spent 3 days extremely sick from contaminated river water. I had barely slept, my stomach was still destroyed, my elbow hurt, and I knew my body probably had one real attempt left in it. And somehow, on that attempt, everything showed up when I needed it. I remember pulling onto the wall and telling myself the same thing I used to say before climbing in competition finals: “Watch this.” Something switched, and a few minutes later, I was standing on top. Looking back almost 3 years later, I think I understand that moment differently now. We tend to think resilience is something we summon when life gets hard; but I don’t think it works like that… I think you practice it. Every training session where you do the work when nobody is watching, every time you leave a session disappointed but try again, every injury where you have to be patient instead of impulsive, every time you make the harder decision because you know it’s the right one, every project that forces you to confront your weaknesses, and every day you choose consistency over how you happen to feel in that moment. THAT is practicing who you are going to be when something REALLY matters. Life doesn’t give us many moments where everything we’ve built gets called upon at once, but occasionally it does! And when that moment comes, you don’t suddenly become resilient, disciplined, courageous or persistent; you reveal how much of those things you’ve practiced. That’s one of the greatest gifts climbing has given me. It gives us a place to practice doing hard things when the stakes are relatively small, so that when the stakes eventually aren’t small, we’ve been there before. So chase things that scare you. Want something badly. Fail at it and get pissed. Keep going anyway. Standing atop the boulder is nice, but the real prize is the person you become on the way there.