The Small Handholds of Life

You know what guys? It’s just been one of those weeks. One of those weeks where you feel like everything is working against you. Finals didn’t go as well as I had hoped, I broke my dang leg, friends went back home for summer or graduated and moved away, and, to top it all off, in Mario Kart last night, it felt like every time I was going to have an epic win, I would get bombarded with red and green shells from behind and would lose my treasured victories.

I'm the one getting blown up if you can't tell...

Maybe my priorities may be a little off, but, by far the worst and most lifestyle impacting thing this week was my broken leg. I’ve been making summer climbing plans since last December (including Torrey's Peak in CO, Capitol Reef National Park, Disappointment Cleaver-Mt. Rainier *ironic*, and busting completely into the upper 5.12s and maybe a 5.13) and now most of them, if not all, are going straight down the porcelain throne.

In the midst of trying to make peace with this turn of events (I’m reading Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”), my over-enthusiastic brain has made many observations and I've come to some conclusions as well.

For those of you who aren't aware, getting around with a broken leg is a pain. You mostly use crutches except when you’re at home and you only need to travel a short distance, and then you hop. I’m sure it looks funny, but I haven’t quite managed to keep a good humor about it yet. It just gets a lot less funny when you are the one having to do it all day.

Anyway.

Don't let his smile fool you, I can tell he's thinking, "I JUST
got down the stairs and now you want me to go back
UP to grab something?!"

Moving around the apartment, sometimes I go Tiny Tim style and just use one crutch (slightly more or less humorous, depending on one’s point of view I’m sure). To alleviate the stress on the one arm and the one leg, I try to find other places for my free hand to grab and assist while traveling throughout the apartment. In the course of this, I've been pleasantly surprised to find that there are TONS of handholds everywhere that I can use just fine! I can use the door frames as a small crimp hold, or the bars going down the stairway as a pinch, my bed, trunk, and tables as mantles, and I've even snagged some bomber underclings on our coffee table that I can totally use to help me stand up from sitting on the couch! Who would have thought?!

All of these movements are natural for me and are even a little comforting. It’s as if the spirit of rock climbing knows my pain and has allowed me to at least relish the small tastes and reminders of climbing that I can get every now and then.

One day, while thinking of this, I realized that it’s likely that not every gimp in the world realizes and utilizes these holds that are almost essential for my happiness as a temporary monoplegic . It made me a little sad for them honestly. But I realized that this has a massive correlation to everyone's life, gimp or gimp-free.

In our lives, there are so many things that we can do. So many, in fact, that we really can’t do all of them or gain experience in all of them. But those things that we do gain experience in, we grow in them, we become better at them. As we get better, we begin to realize that within everything that we do are small steps, holds, inches to gain, or ground to cover. We can start to look at an overall picture, and then break it down to its components in order to understand the picture and what things we need to do to accomplish a goal or meet a task.

I think that everybody has the capability to do this, it is an essential life skill to be able to break things down into the small "holds" that make it possible to do anything. But I also think that not everyone dedicates themselves enough or has experience enough to see ALL the small "holds" that would make life easier for them and make them more successful. It takes time and effort and dedication. Not everyone really wants to do that. But isn't that what life really is? Isn't that what defines us as humans? The drive to progress, learn, and grow?

I think it does, and I think that this philosophy of seeing all the small "holds" or being able to see all the steps and pieces of a larger picture will lead anyone to eventual success and ease of way in whatever they're doing.

It's been helping this gimp anyway.