Sport, but especially rock climbing, turned out to be my way to cope with things that are or were happening: war in my home country, COVID, work stress, personal experiences. Climbing showed me how much I have missed out growing up and but also that there is still hope and room to have a healthy life all despite approaching midlife milestone (and its crisis I guess).

Last few years I’ve been doing more sports than ever before in my life and my body is probably in the best physical shape than ever before and is getting better. In high school, university and early in my career I saw nothing other than my computer or studies. I didn’t take any care of myself nor did I consider it something I had to do. I didn’t give this enough consideration. I started to build my self-esteem via achievements at work and neglected many of other aspects of life, which I regret now. Since then some things have changed. In 2016 I started to run, not much but over time it became quite regular. In 2021 I haven’t missed a single day to a sports activity. As I write this, my usual week includes 1-3 days of rock climbing, 1-2 kickboxing days, 1-2 strength trainings, 1-2 runs and occassional one-off activity (hiking, biking, skiiing, etc…) and I would do more if I could get more days in a week.

Occassionally I get asked why I like climbing and I don’t normally have a good anwer to shoot back right away. It kind of does seem somewhat silly for a fully grown adult to go and try to get up the wall. It may seem absolutely purposeless to climb a steep rock only to get back down later on. But if you think what it takes you could see that one has to go through a process of challanging themselves. They have to fight fear of falling, they have to apply strength up to their limit, and they have to be aware of their body (much like in meditation). So, in a way, climbing can be seen as a spiritual experience. I think over time climbing does more to your mind than to you body.

Climbing is quite social activity. You would normally see a bunch of people cheering someone from their group trying to send a bouldering problem. If you are new, at the beginning you might feel intimidated by all the strong people climbing crazy stuff but you quickly realize that the environment is very inclusive. I don’t know the exact reason, probably, because we, climbers, realize that everyone came here to push themselves over own comfort zone and we want to celebrate as if it was part of our own achievement. Or, maybe, it is our ancestory genes from back when we climbed trees.

I personally maintained a strong friendship over climbing, have met multiple new people, and used climbing as means to invite non-climber friends to hang-out with, and, maybe, learned something new about life from these people. Today I’m going to drive a couple hours to climb with 5 strangers I have never met before.

I’m looking forward to what climbing holds for me. I envision sending harder problems, meeting more of new people, being in places hardly reachable by many, but most of all building self-esteem, chasing that sense of achievement, and feeling of being alive.

Everyone finds their own way, what’s your way?