Resisting “The Climb”

This is for those who can’t climb the mountain (or don’t want to)

So help me if I have to hear Miley Cyrus croon this inspiration ballad equating life’s adversities with mountaineering. A disclaimer here: if this song, and this metaphor, work for you, this piece may not be written for you, and that’s okay. In the great cycle of life, as well as its specific trials, metaphors matter. This is written for those who have found this particular metaphor does not work for them.

This is written for you if you’ve ever wondered if the concept of “recovery” is for you at all.

Let’s get this part of my deconstruction of this metaphor out of the way: I am against mountaineering. I find myself unable to get around the viewpoint that this sport is a representation for the hubris of mankind and the Sauronian will to dominate all life (and no, it’s not lost on me that my favorite tale is one in which the central task is to climb a mountain). As per Britannica, the mountaineering I’m describing here is “the sport of attaining, or attempting to attain, high points in mountainous regions, mainly for the pleasure of the climb”.

It doesn’t help that I’ve read Jon Krakauer’s novel Into Thin Air, recounting the true story of a disaster that killed and harmed multiple people on one particular Everest expedition. It also explores the tremendous commercialism involved in “conquering” a mountain and the kind of decision-making one generally displays in undertaking such an endeavor. Perhaps I am simply too literal in my thinking, but it is a deeply sad story.

In America especially, ambition is seen as virtuous, even though we’ve been shown its cost over and over. In one point of view, ambition is fueling the soul-deprived machinery of capitalism, keeping us working harder than ever during global crises, making the rich richer while the common person is deprived of resources for living. Our drinking water is becoming poisoned, our summers uncomfortably hot, ice caps are melted by the rays of industrialization and Everest, itself, has been greatly damaged by foot traffic. Yet the push endures to keep making. Bigger better faster stronger more more more more.

When we begin talking about climbing mountains, especially when this metaphor is chosen not by the individual personally going through hardship, but by a person or entity in a position of power and authority, I can’t help but ask: “For what? For whom?”. The act of climbing a mountain takes tremendous energy, effort, and the mustering of resources.

Meanwhile, when we begin talking about sustainability, we are turning attention toward conservation of energy. Industry remains fixed on reaching the peak at the same time as our smaller grassroots communities are begging for the capacity to restore and salvage. Large-scale entities are comparing our mental and physical health struggles to Everest, while those of us actually facing those struggles are dreaming of ease, of peace, of taking the path of least spoons. We’re talking about how to coexist with our difficulties rather than how to defeat them.

Would Everest continue to be used as motivation if we acknowledge the fact that this mountain is a graveyard, a place where at least 100 bodies of its climbers remain out in the open and on full display? In what ways would it shift the conversation if, every time Everest was brought up as a representative of success, it was called by its Napali and Tibetan names: Sagarmāthā सगरमाथा, Chomolungma ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ, just to remind us that this mountain does not belong to the white people who ascended it and called it a name of their own choosing?

How much does its use as a metaphor perpetuate this particular mountain’s exploitation? Regarding the mountain itself, and how humans treat it, how can we respect the power of it without needing to claim that power as our own? How can we use Earth’s terrain less as a vehicle for human advancement, instead acknowledging our responsibility as stewards of the land?

Then, regarding the use of metaphor, in what new ways can we feel capable and connected to the spirit of that-which-is-bigger-than-us while resisting the culture of domination? When we assume that all people are inspired by the narrative of defeating our struggles, who does this leave out? When we use mountaineering to promote the possibility of “overcoming” conditions like anxiety, trauma, depression, OCD, what expectations of the human experience does that lay the foundation for? What about mainstream attitudes toward chronic medical illnesses and pain?

How can language and image better reach those of us who have conditions we will never recover from? What about those of us who are better off befriending our mountains? Or perhaps keeping them at a respectful distance?

Let me leave you, reader, with an invitation to contemplate your own metaphors. Which ones align with your life’s tapestry? What images, stories, or objects do you conjure when things get scary tough, and what do they mean to you? Which metaphors have you inherited, or have been given to you by others, that you’d be better off letting go of?