San Francisco Voice

There are two San Francisco activities which I currently adore: indoor rock climbing and falling in love.  The former I do through the Touchstone gyms (more specifically at the Mission Cliffs).  The latter I do every time that I step out in to the city which won my heart in a true case of love at first sight.  And what I’m learning as I get more in depth with both of them is that the lessons learned in one apply equally to the other.  So, each time that I head to the rock gym, I’m going to find a new lesson and see how it applies to love, and I’ll share it here which means that you’ll get to learn along with me.

I’ll get the cliché one out of the way first: you can’t be afraid to fall.  Every single time that I get too high up on a wall, I panic and decide that I can’t go any further, because I’m terrified of falling.  And every single time, I feel disappointed with myself, mostly because I’m sure that I missed out on the wonder of the experience because I wouldn’t let myself take that risk.  The same is true, of course, for falling in love.  You can guard your heart because of the fear of falling, but then you’re bound to feel like you missed out on the greater experiences in life.

Looking at the wall the last time, I thought to myself, “Well, what’s the worst that could happen?”  Yeah, I could fall.  And in a bad scenario, I could take a bad hit on the mats and end up hurting for a long time.  But it’s not likely that anything worse than that would happen.  And love is bound to make you hurt, sometimes hard and for a long time, but in the end, you’ll get back up and look at the wall again and start wondering what’s up there at the top.

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