Category Archives: Hiking

Blast Open Your Light

Obstacles Are Necessary

Obstacles Are Necessary

Few things are ever a straight line.

I used to go backpacking with a buddy of mine.

When you’re backpacking, you are a few days away from any kind of civilization, on foot at least.

This makes for some REALLY nice undisturbed scenery. But sometimes you’ve got to hike over some HUGE mountains to get there.

For every three or four miles through a gorgeous meadow with all kinds of flowers, lazy rivers, etc, you’ve got hoof it up some pretty steep hills.

The worst are switchbacks. The hill is too steep to walk straight up, so you’ve got to go on these really LONG back and forth trails that slowly go up to the top.

Usually to a pass, which is in between two high mountain peaks.

Some of these look REALLY intimidating from a couple miles out.

I remember one in particular. We were walking on a relatively flat surface, but it was clear that we’d be going up soon.

Couple miles ahead of us was this HUGE mountain range. And I couldn’t see ANY way over it.

But the closer we’d got, the more I started to see a brief outline of a very thin trail criss-crossing up the face.

And sure enough, when we started going up, it wasn’t that bad.

Now, had I not had any experiencing hiking up switchbacks, I could have easily looked at that seemingly insurmountable mountain range and thought, “No. Way.”

And turned around.

Luckily, PLENTY of people had gone before. Not only was their a trail (obviously) but we had a guidebook that explained exactly what to expect.

If we were some kind of settlers or immigrants, we may have given up.

A lot of things can seem IMPOSSIBLE when we first look at them. Especially when we’ve never done anything like it before.

Most of the time there’s no trail, and we don’t any guidebook telling us what to expect.

Well, that’s not really true.

The secret of all human development, creativity and inventions is the same, from a structural standpoint.

Keep trying things until you find out what works. Then do more of that.

So long as you go slow, and measure ALL your feedback, you simply CAN NOT fail.

(Unlike when you’re hiking, and making a mistake can send you off a cliff!)

The truth is that ALL HUMANS come pre-programmed to move forward into uncertainty.

Even something as simple a reaching for a light switch in the dark. You have a clear goal, and you take action.

Sure, you don’t hit the switch the first time, but you keep fumbling around until you do.

Now, it may seem like a stretch, but if you can turn on a light in the dark, you can do anything.

Really.

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