I suppose this blog post has arisen from some personal musings on my own climbing performance lately and the various dead-end avenues of thought I went down whilst trying to think about my motivation for climbing. I would certainly say that in terms of objective grade, my performance has plateaued of late, and reading about James McHaffie's repeat of The Big Bang (F9a, Pen Trwyn) made me feel both pleased for him, and a little despondent! Similarly, whilst I admire Nick Bullock's desire to challenge himself psychologically on routes in an 'ethical' way, it also makes me question whether my climbing is ''good enough". Coupled with these thoughts I realised were a couple of implicit assumptions - firstly that unless you are getting better (ie going up the grades), you are getting 'worse'. Secondly, that it is desirable to always be getting better (and therefore going up the grades). Thirdly, that there is a 'right way' to do climbing, and that is some combination of the difficulty+scariness+ethics equation (with new lines and not going back to climbs you have done before being top banana).
When I actually began to untangle these assumptions that had lain silently but pervasively in my head, I realised that whilst I thought they were utterly admirable and appropriate for climbers like James and Nick at the top of their game, they actually made little sense to me as a climber. When I first started climbing, I loved it for the joy of utterly absorbing movement in beautiful situations. I didn't want to test myself physically or psychologically, didn't feel the need to give myself any more personal challenges (I have enough of those in other areas of my life), and really I was climbing for relaxation and a break away from day to day life. Somehow I had forgotten what I loved about climbing and become sucked into the idea that there is one way to do climbing, and that is the only 'right' way.
I keep coming back to what for me is a very liberating thought - climbing is an inherently pointless activity, where you either go up something and then come down again, or go down something in order to come up it. So its not the outcome that is important - after all, you end up in exactly the same place as you started eventually - but what meaning you ascribe to the process. My personal meaning is no more right or wrong than anyone else's, something that we would do well to remind ourselves of - after all, isn't climbing supposed to be liberated and non-rule bound? That realisation that its pointless also does not mean that therefore I can stop training or trying to work on my weaknesses; in fact it frees me up to work on these without beating myself up with a big stick if I can't manage to improve, because I am still doing what I love - moving over rock in beautiful places. Specifically, if I stop worrying about improvement and challenge and whether I am doing climbing 'right', I can free up crucial brain space to focus on climbing itself - I don't need to take myself and my climbing so seriously!
