…I’m gonna climb it.

Just a note, this is pretty much a short essay on thoughts that came to me in the park and while running.

If there’s a Mountain

I got out of work a little early today, so I decided to go to the park early and get my workout done and out of the way with. However, when I got there I felt compelled to sit down a park bench and think. So that’s what I did.

As I sat there I asked myself, “How did I get here?” I am sitting at Lumphini Park in the middle of Bangkok in 95 degree heat during February while back home there is likely several feet of snow and certainly below freezing temperatures. So how did this happen? How did I get from Chicago, 134 days ago, to this park bench in Bangkok?

It’s a pretty easy answer, to be honest. Anyone can read through my blog to see the different places and modes of transportation I took to get here. But I guess my questions more lies in why rather than how. So why did I decided to do this? Why do I decide to do a lot of the things I do?

The more I thought about the why of my journey the more I started to think about the why of everything in my life. Why do I truly decide to do anything I do? My first initial answer to the why of this trip was, I simply felt compelled to. It was one of those deep down, better do it or you’ll regret it, type of feeling that made me just know this is what I should be doing. I have a lot of those feelings, but I’ve never really contemplated them.

Now, with this sudden realization, I am looking at some of the biggest decisions and “mountains” I’ve climbed in my life and I’m suddenly racing back to them and asking why?

Looking back, as a kid you don’t really get to make a lot of your own decisions, so some of my first memories of these “mountains” I decided to climb surface in high school. Wrestling was the biggest mountain, by far and away, I decided to climb in high school. Then in college, for whatever reason, I felt compelled to graduate in 3 years. I thought, “why not?” I also felt compelled to climb as quickly as I could in my college athletic department as well. It was in college that I felt compelled to go to Nicaragua alone at age 19 resulting in my first backpacking experience. On this trip, however, the major compulsion was to get in a Muay Thai ring; not just as an artifice or gimmick, but to really mean it.

Now, with these previous “mountains” in my head I really start to question the why for each one. If anything I determined my biggest goal in life is to be all that God created me to be, and if by my own sheer laziness or lack of effort I fail to squeeze any amount of talent and ability from the gifts I was blessed with than it would only be a shame and considered a loss.

So to me each of these “mountains” came with the same goal, but maybe different initial motives. Wrestling just seemed like a given since my oldest brother, Clifton, wrestled. Graduating college early seemed a given as well, because if I could put in more effort why wouldn’t I? Taking 4 years would have been like climbing a mountain in a blizzard, but instead of hurrying and summiting quickly to minimize time in the storm deciding to take a casual stroll up instead. Well, maybe not that extreme, but you get my point. When I consider trying to climb the ladder in my college athletic department, I’m not quite sure what my motives were. I hardly know what I want to do with my life now, so it surely wasn’t to achieve a dream or goal of being an athletic director. While parts of me may like that Idea, my conclusion is that this mountain got climbed simply because it was the only “mountain” in front of me. The trip to Nicaragua was an attempt to push me outside of my comfort zone and climb a “mountain” of personal development.

After running those thoughts through my mind I think I am finally ready to tell you why I am sitting here on this park bench in the middle of Bangkok. I ended up half way a crossed the world with 20 new stitches and a professional Muay Thai fight under my belt simply because I needed another mountain…

I mentioned early I still am not entirely sure what I want to do with my life, so what’s the point in rushing up a mountain that might not have the view I’m looking for? I know parts of me still wondered what athletic talent and ability I still had to prove. I am obsessed with being all that God created me to be, and it sure would be a shame to be 60 years old and wonder what if.

The real reason I have been missing from home and been gallivanting around the globe is because it seemed like the best mountain at the time. And, truthfully, it still seems like the best mountain. While I’m not at the top yet, the views along the way have been nothing short of breathtaking. From here I have nothing else to do, but continue climbing. I’ll let you know when I get to the top….