Climbing Mountains vs Surfing

      

Photo by Mike Baird   

When I was 5 years old, I used to say, “When I turn 7, I’ll be a big girl and I’ll be able to do all the things I can’t do now.” When I was 7, I used to say, “When I turn 9, I’ll be a big girl and I’ll be able to do all the things I can’t do now.”Life’s always been that way for me. Always, the eyes on the next peak and climbing hard toward it, knowing that there’ll be the epitome of all knowledge and confidence when I get there.

Keeping a journal helps me to see all the shifts over the past few years. How I take great leaps forward, almost as if each one is going to get me to that perfect spot where I’m omnipotent, omniscient, omniLorna. And then, I climb that next boulder and I’m looking at another leap to be made and I’m only in the perfect spot for a while before I’m moving forward again, sometimes struggling, ever aiming for the next peak of a neverending mountain range.

Through my journals, I see it not so much as mountain-climbing, which is a great way to beat myself up for not climbing fast enough or high enough or able to perch on a peak indefinitely.

Instead, I’m gradually giving over to a more water-based theory of living, of just surfing on the constant ebb and flow of the tides of life. Sometimes high, sometimes low, always moving even when it seems I’m standing still, staying float and sometimes adrift but following the movement of life without the constant worry of finding the highest rock to perch atop. c Lorna Tedder