About

     As I tell my students, one of the most important questions you can ask is "why?" or "what?" Without those, we are simply adrift in life, taking things for granted and not actively engaging in our own existences. As Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." And it was Spinoza's belief that true freedom comes from living your life in a way that aligns with your deepest held moral beliefs, a process that requires you to question everything, even yourself.

     I love climbing. It informs nearly everything I do, from how I spend my time and money to where I went to college to where I live now. In the nearly ten years I have been climbing, I have learned a lot about myself, about the world, and about my relationship to it. Those things, however, are just that: things. That is to say that climbing and everything it entails, from the discipline required to progress to the emotions success and failure both bring forth, climbing remains a thing, something, for me, ill-defined and not fully understood.


     So that is the "why" and "what" of this blog: to better understand my relationship to climbing and the things it has taught me, to dig deep into the moments of clarity I have had with climbing, moments where there appears to be something important that I cannot quite grip, to learn more of what this art has tell me, all through writing.