Many of us will follow where the path may lead, but only the wise and the courageous will go where there is no path, and  leave a trail. Those who get to the top are those who do the jobs they have on hand with everything they have, with energy, enthusiasm and hard work.

And they also believe that the higher they reach, the longer and harder they have to try. Here's an article inspired by a poem, The Mountain and I, by an unknown author.

Why do we want to climb a mountain when we cannot stay on the summit forever?  We have to come down so why bother in the first place?  We want to climb because we know that what is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above.

We climb, we see, we descend, and we no longer see, but we have seen and at least know. We learn from the memory of what we have seen and deal with life accordingly.

We have to understand that there is something in us which responds to the challenge of this mountain and we go out to meet it; that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, that’s why we go.

What we get from this adventure is a feeling of achievement and sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the goal of life.

We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to live and to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for. On the mountain, we learn, we grow and we become better person. We become closer to God and paradise.   

While the conquest of a great peak presents great dangers, it could also bring moments of exultation and bliss, which in the monotonous and materialistic existence of the modern times, are great source of reasons to climb the mountain.

It is not the goal of grand alpinism to face peril, but it is one of the tests we must undergo to deserve the joy of rising above the unexpected challenges that are inherent with every journey.

And when we reach the peak of this proud and beautiful mountain, we would experience a warm, and exalting nobility. Here we cease to be slaves, really feel free and it would be hard to return to servitude.

If we are going to climb a mountain, we need to have the feeling that it's worth dying for. If we're going to climb any mountain -- the mountain of this life, the mountain of accomplishment, the mountain of obstacles, of difficulty --it has to be worth braving the wind and cold and storm, symbolic of adversities.

But alone on the mountain top, we would feel close to God. His voice is so loud that, it is almost like it is thundering. We get a real "high" on top of a mountain. It is a thrill.

The mountains will always be there but are we going to be there too? Good things come to those who wait... better things come to those who don't give up...and the best things come to those who believe!

By Tim Pedrosa

 

We will not grow if we sit in a beautiful flower garden, but we will grow if we explore, if we are in pain, if we experience losses, and if we do not put our head in the sand, but take the pain as a gift to us with a very, very specific purpose.