Climb

It's interesting how much you can think you understand about life. If I've learned anything, it's that most things that happen are out of your control. During grade school you start climbing the ladder. Learning step after step and getting higher and higher. You figure out how your school works, friends work, and the ins and outs of your town. You realize you're pretty high and you've got a nice view of what is below. You own this ladder.

Then you graduate high school and realize your ladder has only taken you ten feet off the ground. You didn't know because you didn't have anything else to compare it to. You see your ladder goes higher. It also connects to other ladders. You want to keep climbing because it's what you've been doing you're whole life. It is the answer to figuring out the rest of the world, so you continue higher. The ground level details start to get fuzzy until they are unrecognizable. More ladders, higher and higher. The air begin to get a little cloudy, but you've still got a good grip.

After, a few years, you may realize that you were never climbing a ladder to begin with. Instead you're climbing a twisting vine. It felt like sturdy ladder steps at first because the base of the vine was so strong and so many traveled there before that each move was already warn into the side. Now, further from regularly traveled steps, the climb becomes more uncertain. The fog sets in and there are no more grooves to put you're feet on. Some of the paths have been found to twist in circles around themselves. Others are just branchs that are weak or dead end and you need to backtrack. You're slipping along the side.

You keep ahold because you know something is waiting for you at the top. Unlike your early years, you now aren't sure what that is. Sure, you can work really hard accomplishing all of your goals, but hopefully you have also realized that you can't control everything. There is always an element that tells you, you might not be the one that knows best. This is why you climb. Step by step, you climb higher to find out what you need, not what you want. What you need so badly that you probably aren't even ready to know about it yet.