Personal

They broke it
so that they did not care so much
when it was destroyed

Little by little
animal by animal
specie by specie
they killed it

Then like murderers
they hid the bodies
in a graveyard
made of the world

This is something that happened to me on a rock-climbing trip in France.

In case you are not familiar with rock climbing as distinct from any other kind of climbing, here is a quick primer.

Rock climbing mean climbing on vertical or near-vertical rock. Each section of a climb is called a pitch, and its length is dictated by the length of the rope the climber is carrying, and the nearness of somewhere to rest.

Multi-pitch climbs can be many hundreds of feet from bottom to top, but many single pitch climbs are 30 metres or less.

If a rock climber gets into trouble, then more often than not he or she can simply down-climb to safety. Mountain climbing can involve technical climbing, but a lot of it is more of an arduous slog on rough terrain, working against altitude. If a mountain climber gets into trouble, it’s often a long way from home and safety.

Ice climbing is a whole other world. 

With that primer on rock climbing, here’s the story.

My girlfriend and I were climbing in France, and I would normally climb free, bolting the rope in at intervals as I climbed. Many routes in France are bolted, meaning that the umbrella organisation for climbers has sunk bolts into the rock face every four metres or so, and the climber can snap the rope into those bolts with a quickdraw as they climb.

On that day I decided not to attempt a particular climb without being roped in from the top. That was because very first foothold was a tiny nubbin of rock, smaller than the tip of my little finger.

At the foot of the climb small boulders were littered all ever the ground.

That nubbin of rock was only a metre or two off the ground, so if I slipped off that I could just see me falling on the edge of a boulder and twisting my ankle.

So I decided to climb an easier bolted route about thirty metres to the side of this particular hard route. The idea was that at the top of the easier route I would shimmy across and clip in at the top of the harder route. Then I would let myself down on the rope and then climb that route in safety because I would roped in from the top of the route.

When I got to the top of the easier route and shimmied across, I made a mistake. I unclipped in the wrong direction. I should have first reversed and down-climbed and then unclipped starting at the bottom until I had worked my way up. But I didn’t.

I started unclipping from the top and that meant that when I was at the last clip I was on the end of a thirty-foot length of rope. I could feel the tension in the rope.

When I unclipped the last clip I would swing like pendulum. And I did.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but the swing was huge and fast. I was swinging, high on adrenalin.

After that I don’t recall anything of the harder route except that very first foothold on the nubbin of rock. It was so easy and I just climbed so fast and so easily.

The walk back through the trees and down to the campsite was breezy and easy. I was laughing and smiling and just happy and interested in everything.

Back at the campsite I showered and dived off the edge of the pool and started swimming. The adrenalin was still pumping and my arms and legs felt no resistance in the water. I could see fluffy clouds reflected in the water and I was swimming through and on them.

It was truly like swimming absolutely effortlessly through fluffy clouds.

Some of the trains that run from London Kings Cross to Cambridge divide at Cambridge. Part of the train goes on to Kings Lynn and the rest stops at Cambridge and does the run back to London. Perhaps it picks up other carriages coming from somewhere else, I don’t know but it seems likely.

When you get on the train and before it sets off, there’s a public announcement announcing how the train divides. It explains that the train is composed of eight carriages and that passengers wanting to travel beyond Cambridge should ensure that they are in the front four carriages.

The rear four carriages are of course nearest the barrier, so we choose to sit in one of those carriages if for no other reason than that we don’t have to walk so far to find a seat.

So there we are and the voice comes over with the announcement. And then there is a pause and then a voice tells you what carriage you are in. So we hear ‘Six of Eight’ or ‘Seven of Eight’ – and every time I hear it I think of Star Trek, ‘Three of Nine’, the Borg, and You will be assimilated: Resistance is futile.

The question is, are the people who recorded the announcement Star Trek fans and did they script the announcement that way on purpose to puzzle passengers?

Being in business is a bad way to run a business.

I came to that observation today when reading a trade magazine. What happened is that a few weeks ago my wife and I decided we didn’t really want to continue with the business – it was taking up too much time and effort.

So we closed a section down and kept the easy bit going. If that gets too much we can shut that down too.

So today I was reading this trade magazine – just enjoying reading it because I didn’t have to be thinking about what we could be doing to stay ahead of the curve – and there were a couple of good articles in the magazine.

One in particular was from a man who was retiring after 40+ years in the business. He dropped little gems of information that I think I would have missed if I had skimmed the article or simply not read it because I was ‘too busy running the business’.

And that’s it in a nutshell – too much ‘hurry hurry worry worry’ (even when things are going well) leads to no time to absorb and think.

Information overload and the nagging drive to get ahead or stay on top reduce our ability to let our minds absorb information in its own time – in its own correct time.

Worry saps our energy and stresses us at one and the same time. We become hooked on beating the train as it thunders along behind us – threatening to catch up to us and grind us into the dust. It’s easy to see how workaholics thrive on the addiction. They are fixed on the track as surely as the train is.

The answer is not solitude exactly – although that state of mind will help – it is being aware and dealing with the situation as it really is – which brings us back to the fact that being in business is bad for business. Worry and stress are bad for business.

No matter how much it might seem to hurt, someone else has got to take part of the load and deal with part of the worry so that we can slow down and smell the roses and the coffee and ‘learn’ and make wise decisions.

Hire a manager – get someone who can do those things well – and then take time out to relax, to think and think creatively.