On Top of the World

There are times when you need to look back to move forward. Your past is teeming with experiences that laid the foundation for who you are. I am a mountain climber, summiting the Grand Teton, the Continental Divide, and the Wind River Range, all in Wyoming. I climb mountains now, mountains of circumstances that filled my past and those I face in the present. The conquered mountain is one to revel in. I remember my first summit of the Grand Teton. Exhilarating to feel on top of the world. It may not have been the tallest, but for as far as I could see, I saw beyond my circumstances. The mountain climb in life serves that purpose. You see beyond the challenge of the climb.

After the summit is the long walk down, back to the reality that I had escaped, back to the mountain of circumstances that I left behind.  The return home was depressing. The feeling of "on top of the world" became the remnant of my imagination. Was it real? Did I tower above all that held me back…from my future?

Mountaintop experiences should be brought forward from our past, to remind you of the climb to overcome. Where are you today? Unless you are walking backwards, you are moving ahead. You have grown since the last summit. You took the experience of the climb and applied it to your reality of life. These peaks in life should become the mountain range of your destiny, of who you have become.

So, when I look in the rearview mirror at the mountain range and head back to the plain, the reality of my daily life, I know that the next mountain I face, I can climb and summit, and once again feel on top of the world.

Shalom.