Part 1 of this post is here.
And the mountains continue to haunt beautifully, like they have been for ages. Every single time you visit them, you are no stranger to this beauty. Meeting the mountains is perhaps a way of feeling a sense of endings and also a sense of beginnings. It will be hard to believe that you are you and the mountains are, well, just they. Look at them and marvel at the way they humble you, like you didn’t know anything at all about the world.
We bring you five more quotes this week, along with wishes that you get to ‘scale’ greater ‘heights’.
“Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.”
– Jack Kerouac
Spontaneity seems to make a lot of sense when you realise how fleeting days and nights really are. Wouldn’t it be wise to, at least once in a while, act on impulse to surprise our own selves? To get even the routine acquainted to something new: a break. A break to go back to where we have come from, even if it means far away from everything that seemingly is a material reflecting the idea of comfort… and to reassure oneself that ideas can transform.
“Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.”
– Greg Child
Why must one climb a mountain against all odds? The thing is, why not? And it is, as clichéd as it may sound, the journey itself that matters. In this case, the journey is about the struggle, the foot-dragging, the air thinning and the wheezing for more air, all leading to everything that’s miraculous, everything that’s infinite, everything that’s magical.
“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”
– Edward Abbey
Stupefy your senses after a spell of struggle. Let this world you get to see from atop a mountain become the utopia your mind has always longed for. A journey with risks will still steer you in the right direction to feel as free as the wandering clouds that daub the mountains with a nonchalant beauty. Why not, then, listen to your fluttering heart that tells you this is why the lonesome, crooked, winding journey was worth it.
“The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.”
– Tennessee Williams
If the wildflowers bursting into blooms don’t fill your chest with joy, then what will? If the bramble doesn’t bruise you and the rock-strewn paths don’t make you falter and the mountain air doesn’t make you mumble something to yourself, then what else will? Gather your glimpses of eternity as you dream by day and ruminate in the night.
“It is not the mountains that we conquer, but ourselves.”
– Sir Edmund Hillary
To be at peace with oneself, like everything about the mountain is first in harmony with itself and then with everything else around it; to be full of integrity and quietly so; to be whole without anything external to trigger that sense of completion; to be and not to be simultaneously…
We hope that you rediscover yourself the next time you conquer a mountain and thereby conquer yourself.
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