SF Rock Climber Lessons In Love
Usually, I go do my indoor rock climbing at Mission Cliffs and I pay attention to the things which I am learning from rock climbing to see if they apply to my dating life. In many cases, they do, which is how I originally came up with the idea of drawing connections between rock climbing and love. But today’s lesson comes from a backwards look at the situation – instead of looking at rock climbing for lessons to apply to love, I looked at my love life for lessons which apply to rock climbing. And it turned out that the most obvious lesson from my San Francisco dating life clearly applies to indoor rock climbing.
Don’t take things too seriously. Have fun!!!
The thing about dating for me right now is that I’m finding it to be a really fun activity. This wasn’t always the case. I’ve always been the kind of girl who hit lots of extremes in her life, and I went through periods of either being in super intense relationships (which were sometimes fun and often not) or else not dating at all (which was often cathartic but rarely fun). Since I moved to San Francisco, I’ve finally learned how to just date for the sake of dating, without worrying about where it’s going or wondering if it’s all going to be okay. I’ve learned how to have passion without intensity and how to enjoy each moment without being too stressed out about the next.
And that applies to the activity of indoor rock climbing as well. While I enjoy rock climbing a lot and hope to do it more as time permits, I’m never going to be the kind of girl who hits the gym five times each week. I’m not particularly competitive, even with myself, and I’m not likely to push myself to the edges of my physical limits just to climb a point hire than I did the last time I was at the gym. Because of that, I’ve thought about not maintaining my membership, telling myself that because I don’t go often enough or I don’t try hard enough, I don’t really want to be going.
But that’s not true at all. I love the rock gym. I love the trek to The Mission that gets me there and the experience of the climb and the fun of watching others who are far more advanced than I am do their thing. And I don’t think I really need to worry about where it’s going or what I’m doing with it, because it’s okay to just have fun. Who knows – there’s another rock climbing gym or two in the Bay Area – maybe I’ll even date around a little bit and see what fun turns up!
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