Make A Damned Choice
The hardest thing to do is one thing at a time
This is the fourth essay in POISON, written circa 2010, and the above photo is of Scott Backes climbing in the South Fork, Cody, WY
This is not relevant to any particular event, just something that has been germinating. It's no blossom but it needs some light. And as I watched myself behaving distractedly while ice climbing on January 4th, 2025 rather than focusing hard and solely on the moment, which the activity requires, the following paragraph hits even harder.
When I teach ice climbing I tell students, "the hardest thing to do is one thing at a time." But ears are deaf and the brain bombarded by stimulus so with a palsy-like, start-stop stutter the student scatters attention everywhere at once. He removes an ice tool then decides it would be better to move a foot but simultaneously figures he should look ahead to see where to move and suddenly one of the remaining two points of contact blows and the rope does its part. Hanging on it the student wonders what happened. As if s/he hadn't been present. Which is, practically speaking, the case: so overwhelmed by sensory input and the demand for decision/action a temporary autism results.
The hardest thing to do is one thing at a time. Whether in the moment or across the entirety of life.
Most people don't focus. Can't or won't. Perhaps, unwilling to risk missing an experience, they do many things simultaneously. Energy is finite though and the more activities or ideas one spends it upon the less is available for each area of interest.
"I can't decide what I should do."
"My desire conflicts with others' expectations."
"Ego keeps me from risking failure. I dabble so that I am never invested."
I have seen it over and over through my life: climbers who didn't focus so never fulfilled potential, athletes who couldn't decide which sport to play so never learned to play one well, people who could not accept that their temperament and somatotype were ill-suited to the activity chosen for them by parents, by expectations, peer pressure, or a misguided life-long dream. Some simply go looking for an activity that makes them happy. But happiness is fickle so they flit from one activity to the next, dipping a toe, maybe wading in to the knees, never seeing or seeking depth, and never grasping that it is the process of mastering something, one thing, that grants access to deeper, universal understanding.
If you do not choose what to do and chase it like your life depends on it the choice will be made for you. In that case sit back and enjoy the ride but keep your complaints to yourself.
As a younger man I found this book fascinating and useful, "On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History", by Thomas Carlyle. It might actually be time to read it again. One passage stood out, well, many did but of the four or five I wrote down at the time, probably 45 years ago, this rings true right now.
"A strong untutored intellect; eyesight, heart: a strong wild man,—might have shaped himself into Poet, King, Priest, any kind of Hero."
Perhaps what struck me hardest was the concept of the untutored intellect, by which I assumed he meant a mind not constrained or shaped by formal education or susceptible to being pressured by social norms. He may have meant something entirely different but when tied to the notion of a strong, wild man it seems he was championing the idea of going one's own way, perhaps revolting against the guard rails and limits established by family, upbringing, expectations, and the goals and status manufactured by others who may or may not have been successful or led lives of any meaning at all themselves.
Hey Haroon "It's been 33 years since I finished college. I still don't know what to do with life." I'm a prime example of exactly the kind of spaniel minded idiot who should have "The hardest thing to do is one thing at a time" tattooed across the back of both paws as a constant choke chain of correction. What I do know is that it's a lot easier to move forward faster if you're already moving and velocity matters whatever the vector change is.
The past is done and waiting is wasting. You've got a whole fantastic life to come, so let passion be your gravity and see where you land when you leap.