Perspective

Mountains of the mind

Mountains beckon like a hand outstretched calling to me. It is a command to stand tall and fearless—step after step after step—lungs bursting, heart cramping. I know only one thing, I must give in to its power and majesty, I must be possessed before I can conquer.

Drunk with the lust for height—to see all that I can see—I climb up and up, driven to put my world in perspective. The climb teaches me to not mistake my fears for the speed of light, or confuse my pain with the shadow of Saturn’s rings, or value my subjective tense more than a frog’s leap…or turn a deaf ear to the whisper of a sunset. The climb teaches me to observe and rejoice. To remember that every seed contains its whole and to find that whole in myself. We are small, we are big, we are here, we are gone. We are but a piece of a pattern and yet, we contain the whole pattern.

Perspective. Perspective. Perspective.

Somewhere near the top, I pause to take a breath and let the significance of this effort settle in. The abrupt views, thin air, and melancholy of the solo climb, take turns confronting me. I look into the moment, hold it to the light and trace the shapes and colors of my life. A panoply of compulsions, secret moments, joys not yet tasted…not to mention the defeat of many armies of well-laid plans. The climb brings clarity—a moment suspended between being and doing.

At the top it is both quiet and loud. Sitting in the stillness of light, time speeds by and disappears. As I scan the horizon, fear drops from view and reveals the potential it was hiding. A moment so devoid of adjectives, so complete in its emptiness that all of joy cannot fill it. A moment that can barely be lived lest it not be true. And I shed the enormous burden of my self-importance. Somewhere in the infinite, there is an echo.

The outstretched hand of the mountains penetrate the sky and I find that part of me that has known death. We sit together, tap tapping our feet to the rhythm of all that surrounds us.

—For my mother, who, in the end, gave up all of life’s vanities and wished for us only happiness.