Talking About Giving

Hi Steph,
I wrote you an email a while ago after reading your book about being brave and meeting new climbing partners and such (Hello from Boston). Anyways, I’ve been following your blog since then. I just wanted to let you know how much I love it and really appreciate you keeping up with it and taking so much time to answering all of our emails. So many of the emails have come at times which were really important in my life. I had just started learning to lead climb when you replied about fear, (which helped tremendously) and recently you had a posting talking about life. So much of the conversations were things I had wondered or been interested in myself.

First of all, I really enjoy spending a lot of time alone and with myself, whether it’s running (which I did a ton of especially when I can’t climb), reading a book, or just thinking about things, so it’s nice to know I’m not the only person who does that. It’s really kept me sane through the last 4 years of an intensive university where it’s been hard to develop real relationships with people who often get lost in the academics of school. I feel really lucky to have found climbing and to have it as big of a part of my life as anything even if it’s been in and out of my life this past year.

I’ve been extremely lucky and have gotten to go on a few longer climbing trips or even spend a few weeks trekking up a few mountains and it really put so much of life in perspective, or just having time to think about the world and what’s important in life. It’s phenomenal just being able to live life, enjoy being outside and doing the things you love to do.

I guess one thing I struggle with is what I should ultimately do after college as well. I do enjoy being technical and my major (computer science), but I love the outdoors. I love climbing, hiking, running. When I dream about this upcoming summer, I think about how I’m hoping to drive and live in the national parks I’ve always wanted to visit (whether it’s climbing or just backpacking) and just living there. But after a certain point, I start feeling guilty. I’ve realized that this last year there’s a lot more than just having a job that pays well in life. I feel this huge urge to make a difference or to somehow have a career that impacts or gives back to the world. Do you ever feel this way? Do you feel like we as individuals have a responsibility to ourselves, our community, or the world to somehow contribute back? I feel like so much of my decisions have been trying to find ways to fulfill this need or desire I have through a career, but I know there are other ways we can do this, just through our human interactions with each other and loving each other. I don’t know actually know though. What do you think?

Also, on a completely different note, I tried practicing Yoga a little bit this past fall. I know you’ve mentioned that it made a phenomenal difference in your climbing and maybe even your spiritual life. There just are so many different variations on yoga. Where do you get started? What would you recommend? What did you find was the biggest influence on your spiritual life/growth?
Thanks so much,
Steph

Dear Steph,
It’s so good to hear from you again, and it makes me glad to know that some of these conversations have been helpful to you in some way. Thank you!

I’ve thought about your questions a lot too, because one of the things I’ve always felt bothered by in my pursuit of climbing is the idea that climbing seems so inherently “selfish.” I have also struggled with feeling like I should be doing more for others. I think of people like Mother Teresa and Bill and Melinda Gates–and it seems impossible to give as much as people like that….and then it can be so daunting that you don’t even know where to begin! But then I realize that every dream is the same: it starts small, and it starts with your simplest personal choices…..with a huge climb, you just have to start at the beginning in the smallest possible way, and one day you have done it.

I believe that being a good person and giving back to the world has to start in the most basic place, which is inside oneself. I have met several people in my life who are truly happy, content and fully at peace, and I have never forgotten those meetings. They inspired me at the time, and they continue to inspire me whenever I think about them.

Happy people make the world a better place. Happy people want to see good things happen, and they look for opportunities to cause good. If you are happy, then you are a gift to everyone around you, and you are an asset in the world, because you are always looking for ways to help others and do good things. And then it spreads from you to the outside world and goes further.

As with everything in life, I think the way to make real change in the world is to start simple and start with your most basic daily habits. Eight years ago I started thinking about plastic grocery bags. I thought about how a few decades ago, bags like that never even existed, and somehow people got things home from stores. And I did some research about how much plastic gets used to make those bags, and how much trash they create, and how those bags even kill sea turtles and other animals. It really started to bother me, to the point where I did not want anything to do with those bags. So I bought some cloth at the thrift store, sewed up four cloth bags, and from that moment on, I never took a bag at a store again. So if I would normally bring home several bags every week, from the grocery store, the hardware store, Target, whatever, in eight years time it must be about two thousand plastic bags saved, or maybe even twice that. Which starts to seem like something. What’s interesting to me is that within the last few years, other people have been thinking the same thing, and now cloth bags are very popular. They even sell reuseable bags at Walmart now. And plastic bags have even been outlawed in many cities!

Becoming vegan is also a small daily change that creates good in the world. Each time you don’t consume an animal product, you are directly responsible for not causing an animal’s death, and you are not supporting animal torture in a factory farm. I am convinced there is no justification for causing misery and suffering to living creatures by forcing them to live in awful, unnatural conditions. Now if you make that decision every day, it really starts to add up—every day, you have removed yourself from consumer support of factory farming and animal consumption. From an environmental standpoint, this decision is extremely beneficial as well. And as with plastic bags, a lot of people seem to be thinking along these lines too, now, because in the last year I have seen more and more people are starting to get interested in the vegan diet for both health and environmental/ethical reasons. So big differences can be made in the world by every individual’s personal, daily lifestyle choices….

These little examples are things that you can make happen, right now and for the rest of your life, which I think is even more fundamental than what career you have or where you live or what sports you do. By making a serious decision to change your lifestyle, when it’s something you do every day throughout your lifetime (like eat!), you can make a real impact both through the action itself and through the example it gives to the people who know you or see you acting on what you believe. So maybe there are some things like this that you feel strongly about, and that you would like to start doing right now, on a daily basis. I think it’s a really big step, and like one little pebble tossed into a pool, the ripples really do spread out further and further…..

About yoga: at first I started to learn yoga in a local class in Moab, because I didn’t know how to practice it at all. Once I started to learn some basic poses, I got a great book, called “Light On Yoga” by B.K.S. Iyengar. I actually quoted some words from this book in my own book, because they made such an impact on me. With yoga, I have learned that I just do what feels good. If I’m feeling a little lazy, I do one Sun Salutation. Then sometimes I feel like doing more, and I end up doing a whole “session.” Other times, I just do the sun salute, and that’s it. The important thing for me is to just follow my energy level. Feeling your muscles relax, breathing in air, thinking about energy—those things are really healthy on many levels, though they seem very simple. As with everything, I recommend just trying to start, even if you don’t know how or you feel like there’s so much you don’t know—don’t let that prevent you from just starting. Just learn how to do the sun salute, and practice it. Next thing you know, you’ll be doing yoga. After you start understanding the physical practice, the spiritual side will start to become more clear. If that interests you, you will have a full lifetime worth of learning to pursue!

I wish you all the best Steph, with all of your choices—I know they will be generous and thoughtful ones,
xx Steph