FREE SOLO

Mountains are often used as metaphors to describe life's challenges, and I have found that that comparison is quite apt. My own life has been quite charmed and fairly flat. However, I realized that charmed or easy do not equate to meaningful. In large part, that is why I decided to turn my world upside down and leave a nice job with good friends in a city I enjoyed living in.

What I did not realize is how complicated it would be to move and to start over from scratch. Along the way, my family and I had to sell a house, buy a house, wind down operations in the lab, try to recruit new people for the lab, have several conflict-prone conversations about bringing items with me from work, move said items across the country along with ourselves, navigate finding new schools and soccer clubs for the kids, and settle into a new community all in 5 short months.

I thought of the heights we had climbed when I watched the documentary "Free Solo" tonight that tells the story of the climber Alex Honnold's quest to climb El Capitan in Yosemite without the use of ropes or harnesses. Mind you the words I typed do not do adequate justice to his feat, nor does the route he took shown below. To understand the gravity of his feat, one must watch the film or visit Yosemite - as I have.

What struck my most about Alex and his story though was his motivation. He did not seek happiness or even longevity. He craved excellence and doing something that many believed to be impossible. There were many starts and stops along the way, but he never gave up. While his ascent may have taken just under three hours, he spent years preparing himself to succeed in that moment. His story is one that I will not forget, especially as I encounter other struggles in the coming years and beyond. Fulfillment matters. Excellence matters. One must be willing to risk everything for those things because to get to the top of one's proverbial mountain in truly magnificent. Here's to Alex!