Like A Mountain

It is your own personal mountain, and the people you meet will either help you climb it, or try to drag you down. You can walk around the mountain, climb straight up, or take an indirect route to the top. Each path will vary in difficulty. If you go straight to the top, it’s going to be a tough climb and the chance of getting hurt is close to 100%. But the reward is you get to experience the beautiful view from the top for longer.

The indirect route allows you to experience more of the forest and its beauty. It is still difficult and challenging and you might loose sight of the mountaintop for a while. Eventually, your goal reveals itself through the branches of the canopy overhead and you are back on track. This path is beautiful, but you will have a shorter time to appreciate the view from the top.

If you stay at the bottom and never attempt to climb the mountain then you will grow weak from inactivity. The forest grows around you and soon you loose sight of the mountain altogether. Eventually, the mountain becomes an impossible childhood dream. The body, mind and soul grow ever weaker under the encroaching branches.

The mountain is still there though and when you begin fighting and climbing, the body and soul will hurt. These pains are not bad, they are required to grow and gain strength. We begin building up our strengths; mind, body and soul as we climb because even if we take the indirect route, the top of the mountain will be difficult.

It will test us in ways we never dreamed of when we were at the bottom. We will have to jump over chasms, traverse narrow ledges and pull ourselves along cracks only our fingertips can feel. The body will protest, but the mind will persist and our soul will remain strong because we have grown and fought for ever step.

The climb up the mountain trains us, just as life teaches us. We learn how to survive, who to love and who not to love, what we like and what we don’t like. We come to know how to treat people, and how we want to be treated. Life teaches all of us. Some lessons are harder than others, but there will come a time when we are glad for those hard lessons because it has made us tough. It has strengthened us in the long run.

Then one day, you will crest the top of your mountain, tired and scared. Your gaze will rise from the rocks under your feet and hands to the view laid out before you. Stretching from horizon to horizon will be a scene more beautiful than anything you have witnessed before.