musings on courage and strength

Okay so this post is very random and bounces around a lot, and if anyone has comments, I'd be psyched.  Plus, is anyone even reading my blog anymore?

I think I've admired courage on rock and striving to be a better climber too much.

I've met some people this year who make me feel good when I'm around them.  I've also spent a lot of time with people who nearly always make me feel bad.  I have to wonder where I've gotten confused about what to admire in a person...what makes a person great to be around.

A large part of me dreams of focussing solely on one thing.  It's just so romantic isn't it?  For me it's climbing, but almost anything you can think of has its devotees.  Look around at all of the subcultures that exist, where someone who does something as esoteric as collecting bromeliads or playing ping pong well is exalted by those who want to collect more bromeliads or hit a ping pong ball harder.  And naturally, every subculture has it's celebrities, villains and legends.  

I wonder if being devoted to one single thing is sometimes a way of avoiding life.  If you can surround yourself with people who do that one thing, then you never have to deal with folks with whom you have nothing in common.  

In a lot of ways I feel like I've always straddled disparate worlds, but that's another blog post altogether.

I'm not sure what I want to get at with this post, other than that there are so many things to admire in people that have nothing to do with physical courage or prowess.  It's just hard to put a label on it, these things aren't tangible, and it's so much easier to strive for a harder grade than to strive to be more emotionally potent.  For example, sometimes it is so much harder to love someone and tell them that you love them knowing that it is unrequited than it is to whip on some run out sketchy climb.  Only there are no magazines writing articles about emotional strength and courage, and last time I checked La Sportiva wasn't giving free shoes to people whose strength cannot be measured in grades.  

Climbing is often a reductionist sport.  People want to reduce climbing to grades, numbers of pitches, speed, sport, trad, ethically this, ethically that, no kneebars, with kneebars.  Climbers just love to categorize.  And I have no problem with categories, because it makes it easier to communicate with people.  But I'm tired of getting caught up what category my day (5.6? 5.12?) or my climbing history fits into (what's the hardest grade I've climbed?).

Life has handed me a bunch of crap this year that can't be categorized.  Funny, I can't help wanting to know if I'm a 5.6 MS patient or a 5.13 MS patient.  Am I doing a good job?  What does that even mean?  What are the benchmarks?  Who fucking cares?

People ask me what happens with MS, what causes it, what do the drugs do, blah blah blah.  Well no one fucking knows.  It's way scarier to deal with things that are unpredictable and cannot be categorized.  I only wish that I could answer all of those questions.  Imagine how much anxiety I could avoid if I could answer all of these questions!  Rock climbing isn't scary at all when you compare it to your body silently self-destructing.

I just feel like I've gotten caught up in things that are really of no consequence.  Maybe I'm avoiding thinking about all the crazy shit that's happened this year (likely), or maybe I have my own personality deficiencies to overcome (definitely).  Either way I need to figure some stuff out and make sure I spend time with people who enrich my life, rather than suck it dry.  And for me, this means identifying what it is that really makes someone awesome.  

So to all of those people who think that they are hot shit and ask me if I fell on Stoner's Highway? 

Fuck you clown, and get a life.