This fire in me

This past weekend was also very empowering for me, for smaller reasons as well as deeper ones. 

Lots of small things contributed to this feeling of empowerment: grilling dinner for my cousins & me; organizing the outing to go see the Perseid shower (my cousins relied on me since they’re new in the area); being firm, while also polite, with someone who had to free my apartment of their furniture; assembling and arranging my new desk and home-office workspace on my own (something that would definitely have been easier with another pair of hands/arms!). Each of these were small instances, per se, but they all added up to a sense of “being able” to do things, on the one hand, as well as to have resonance with other persons who go along with the plans. After so many instances of having to do things (including having fun) on my own because other people are uninterested, unavailable or unaccountable, it’s great to finally be doing things with other persons who also enjoy those things, to share the fun! To me it feels empowering and satisfying in a sweet way to see that my suggestions are accepted, welcomed, and enjoyed by others, too.

And this seems to be the case with climbing now, as well — which is also one of the deeper reasons for my feeling of empowerment from this weekend (and recently, in general). This coming into “my climber self” seems to be continuing: my physical strength and my skills are still growing and thus my confidence, too. And even my creativity, especially when climbing outdoors: I still have a lot to improve on technique but it is getting better and particularly when climbing outdoors I find myself doing moves that are pretty technical without being aware of it at the moment — either I realize it later or, more often, my climbing partners notice and tell me about it.

I think that was is fueling me is a sort of fire inside me. Whether it’s clinical anxiety or simply a high level of life energy or enthusiasm, I don’t know. But when I find good ways of channeling it, it’s really wonderful — empowering, energetic, efficient. 

I’m often being described as “full of energy”, “passionate”, and even “fiery”. One of my climbing buddies on Sunday mentioned how “fiery” I am. And it was such a serendipitously appropriate comment because just a short while earlier, as I was working on the tricky crux of this 5.11b climb outdoors at the end of our full morning of climbing, I made a move that felt to me way beyond my level, especially from the viewpoint of technique, like I was stretching my skills and pushing my boundaries in a way that I noticed even as I was doing it and which was surprising to me. Usually when I climb I’m so much “in the flow” that I have no space for outside thoughts (which is one of the reasons I love climbing so much): but in that moment, as I made that move way beyond what I expected of myself, I distinctly thought, “Here’s that fire in me, fueling me to do this — this is why I like rock climbing so much: because it allows me to channel this fire in me in a healthy, satisfying, fun way”.

Rock climbing, especially outdoors, gives me a means of satisfying that need I have deep inside me to push myself, and it truly allows me to do it in a way that is healthy and fun. It really allows me to kindle and quench that fire inside me without extinguishing it — in a similar way to how sailing and motorcycle riding do — maybe because all these activities involve some serious risk when doing them. And they’re also all activities that are still mostly male-dominated, where I’m still often in the minority — something I don’t really mind, on the contrary, for me it’s a way of affirming my androgynous identity. As I belayed my climbing buddy outdoors on Sunday, without the extra weight-reduction that comes from the special rope setups one finds in gyms, I felt all the responsibility, risk, satisfaction and empowerment of the moment: I was lead belaying, i.e. “keeping alive” as my buddy put it, a person who weighs 1.5 times myself. It was extremely satisfying for me to see that I had both the physical strength and the mental steadiness to do it; but even more satisfying because it was a shared experience, an important moment of mutual trust and bonding.

Kindling and quenching this fire within me not just for myself, not always on my own, but together with persons who share a common interest or passion with me (and who aren’t flaky!) — the fact that this fire inside me, at least with some people, isn’t driving them away from me — maybe this is what makes this fire inside me even more valuable to me.