Ramen, Climbing and Transcendental Importance

Fumbling with the orange wrapper, my friend grabbed his dry instant ramen noodle block, broke it in half and dunked it into a foam cup of hot water.

Breakfast this morning was modest as were our attitudes. We started to get ready for a full day of climbing.

Not six hours earlier, five of us jumped into two cars, and impulsively drove through the night to the mid-California desert, voluntarily sleeping on dirt, for the promise of a full day of climbing.

I take a slurp of my soup out of a pot as my friend finishes his in his foam cup.

This morning is a beautiful one. The sun’s first light turned everything orange. Birds chirped and behind it there was a unique silence that only comes with a new day. The night before was a perfect starry night, a pitch black sky, with what seemed like an infinite number of stars staring back at you. It was humbling. This was the outdoors and we all chose to be there.

You feel your nerves, you feel your excitement, you can’t help but to feel emotion.

In Greek, there are two words for time.

The first, Chronos refers to actual time, the days, hours, minutes, seconds, the duration of time and how it ticks by and passes. The second, Kairos, is roughly translated to opportunity. Time that is in the moment, time with no regard of length. Kairos refers to the moment that you are in right now and how it makes you feel, the quality of that piece of time you are living.

When you climb all day, time moves by quickly, Oh it’s two o’clock already — Chronos. But, when you are up on a wall, you live and feel Kairos.

You feel your nerves, you feel your excitement, you can’t help but to feel emotion. When you are up on a wall there is a chance that you may fall. It’s a risk that you take, that we all take, when making the decision to leave the horizontal one for a few minutes in a vertical microcosm. To be up there above what is normal takes one hundred percent of your time and energy. You are constantly engaged but counter-intuitively it’s calming.

When you are up on the wall, you are forced to feel uncomfortable, you are forced to feel uneasy. You are put in a situation that you may not want to be in and you are scared aching with fear.

You get through it and because of it you are a better person. Not just a better climber but a better person.

Climbing for me keeps me growing. You learn so much about yourself when you are alone up there scared. Shaded in fear. It is only you that can overcome it.

Being on the wall is an incredible experience, and anyone who wants to share in that experience is a friend of mine.

Including the four guys I eat packaged Ramen with in the desert.