Naivety looks at towering mountains and says, “Yeah, I could do that.”
Perhaps, young and impressionable, you’ve seen an inspirational movie about a sport you’ve never played. You have none of the skills or training but the soundtrack in the final act swells with feeling. Only sheer determination could give the hero the strength to push through impossible odds.
A well-told story lures you into thinking that if you just had enough heart, you too could do the impossible.
You imagine yourself nearing the peak of Independence Pass in Colorado. Your strength has long since evaporated but you still pedal one foot at a time. Sure, it’s hard to conquer a mountain but how could you quit? All you need to do is step down on the pedals. That’s not that hard. I can do that right now. Step. Just like that. Step.
Face Your Limitations
Maturity looks at towering mountains and says, “That’s tough.”
Heroic attempts are easier said than done. As life progresses and you grow into your strengths and weaknesses, you face your limitations. You can’t become a best in the world virtuoso through sheer willpower alone.
With maturity, you appreciate that there is a match between the difficulty of doing something and reverence we have for the person who does it. It’s fair to reward very difficult accomplishments with special honor. It would be unfair for us to recognize easy tasks that anyone could do on a whim of inspiration.
Over time, you deepen your intuition of what you can and can’t do. You complete a triathlon during a season of your life when triathlon training is your sole focus. But while you’re putting time into that hobby, you’re not investing in reaching your reading goal for the year.
When you see someone who’s read a lot of good books, you are at peace with your accomplishments and theirs. To read as much as they do, you would need to give up your triathlon hobby to focus solely on becoming well-read.
But we’re human and we struggle with our finiteness. You begin every week resolving to find time for chores, family time, your day job, social activities, entertainment and a 7-12 hour/week cycling training plan. At the end of the week, you failed at most of those goals, and you feel horrible… but maybe next week you’ll find the time?
If you understand your limits and the limits to the 24-hour day, you make hard choices between many good things. You need to focus on what you care about most. You narrow your list of what you can and will do. You add more and more to your list of what you can’t do unless it was your sole focus in life. You look over your lists from time to time and weigh out what it would cost you to bump secondary priorities into coveted top positions.
Your mortality might weigh on you at times like that. If from week to week you can only focus on one priority over another, those weeks will turn into seasons and into years. You may never in your life do whatever crazy big adventure that once seemed almost possible on the thinnest whim of inspiration.
Ignore Your Limitations
Okay, sure. That’s very true and practical and all but hear me out.
If you find a weekend when plane tickets to Aspen Colorado are cheap and you decide to pack your bike…
If you think you could tackle Independence Pass with 4,160 feet of climbing, the biggest climb you’ve possibly ever done…
If you’re excited by 19.13 miles of uphill reaching 11,796 feet above sea level on day two of acclimating to higher altitude…
If you lack any sensible thought in your head about bringing sufficient calories even though you’ll be biking through the lunch hour…
…sometimes, just sometimes, you can make it happen.
Face Your Mountains
So that’s how I found myself draining those last drops of inspiration within 2 miles of the summit on Independence Pass with my brother, Kyle. (Yes, this is the same Kyle from my other story about getting heat exhaustion within 2 miles of a different mountaintop.) After those drops of willpower were gone, I had nothing else left.
I didn’t have the fitness. I couldn’t keep pushing myself as though I had trained for this for months. I wasn’t prepared. I couldn’t even rely on my ability to prepare earlier that day. I was out of food, the simplest preparation I could have made.
Each time I got on the bike after a “short” break, I just wanted to get off. I felt like the strings puppeteering my skeleton had come loose. Knock, knock, time to get biking. Sorry, nobody home.
There was no foothold for mental perseverance. I was fighting a body problem. My mind had no legs. It couldn’t turn the pedals by itself. But my legs had no ears. They had no intention of listening. There was a chasm between thoughts and the movements of my legs. I wasn’t in pain, but nothing was registering.
So, what did this mean for naive inspiration? Sheer determination had left me stranded at 11,300 feet wanting to take a nap on a gravel shoulder. Had grounded reality caught up with me? Did I need to admit defeat and return with humility to the base of the mountain?
Yes and no.
Yes, the thin basis of willpower was depleted. Naivety was dead and gone. There were no magical words that could get me up that hill. No music would have motivated me. There was no rousing speech from a coach who refuses to give up.
But no, I didn’t turn around. I may have sat there for an eternity, but I did not retreat a single step. I set a timer. No thinking. No evaluating. When the timer went off, I got up and on my bike without thinking if I did or didn’t want to.
In the final mile, Kyle pedaled beside me, placed a hand on my back and pushed me forward.
He was out of breath within minutes. It’s not easy to do the work of two people.
We weren’t going fast but we were moving. We were getting closer to the summit. Kyle let go and I biked across the finish.
Naivety looks at towering mountains and says, “Yeah, I could do that.”
Maturity looks at towering mountains and says, “That’s tough.”
But both naivety and maturity will keep you on the couch.
Action looks at towering mountains and says, “Let’s go.”
I Made a YouTube Video for Independence Pass!
> You can watch the 13-minute “Climb Up Independence Pass” documentary on YouTube