The child’s face was scrunched up so tightly that it looked as though he had aged ten fold. His body froze as if a millimetre of movement would result in his immediate demise. His fingertips turned white from his intense grip, and his feet were placed as firmly as is possible on fake climbing wall rocks a fraction of the size of his cute little feet. Samuel, as his mother’s shouts soon revealed his name was, wanted desperately to get down from the climbing wall, yet paradoxically would not allow anyone to even instruct him to move a muscle.
Five other kids of similar heights and increasingly similar anxiety levels propped their helmeted heads up, looking at their fellow climber resembling soldiers about to enter a war they didn’t believe in. Their wide eyes and sudden quiet spoke more than any of their words could have.
The climbing instructor, bellowing voice and sturdy stance, powered over with reassurances and instructions that may as well have been spoken in an alien dialect such was the degree that Samuel could only hear his own voice repeating “No, No, No”. “I want to come down, no stay away. No. Ohhhh I want to come down. I am scared. I want to come down I don’t like it,” he continued. I wondered and watched, completely distracted from my own climbing lesson, as Samuel was eventually rescued by the instructor, who needed only to make two steps up and one large arm swoop across to save Samuel from his 6 foot fall. The joys of horizontal living were evident all over Samuel’s face when his feet re-met the ground.
Back to my lesson, and it was my turn to ‘B-lay’; to hold the ropes and adjust them as my fellow climber progressed up the climbing centre wall. As the rope shortened, and my climbing buddy rose, the cries of another of the reluctant child soldiers stole my attention. I don’t know what this child’s name was, but she sounded more scared than even Scardey Cat Samuel (I know, that was low of me). Noticing that I too was watching the little climbers, one of my climbing course crew, an Aussie lady with a genuine aura and legs that gave her quite the climbing advantage, leaned over to me aptly saying ‘God, just take them home if they don’t like it!’. I was at that stage where I had asked Aussie lady her name more than once, and still had no clue of it, so I decided that I would get by with just speaking in her direction when I needed to address her.
The screams of the crying girl now echoed throughout our fake cliff land – “Mummy I can’t I can’t. I cant do it.” My climbing buddy was back on safe ground so I took my attention back to the red faced girl who’s climbing-pro looking Mother calmly guided her to scale up the operation. ‘Move your left hand to the pink stone there. And now put your right foot on the pink and white stone there… that’s it… that’s it… you’re moving up’, her mother said, and moving up she was. Her breathing had returned to a more normal pace, and I could no longer hear it from across the room. She turned from resembling a streaming tomato to a full on Alice and Wonderland Cheshire Cat. She was beaming. She had trusted her mother’s words that she could climb that wall, and she made it to the top.
My climbing group and I wondered over to a new section of the centre. We were about to try out the ‘auto-belays’. I thought these would be easier than the previous climbing activity, which relied on a partner, as I could just climb by myself with no reliance on anyone else. Climbing the wall was the easy bit. Once at the top, no amount of yells from below to ‘Just let go!’ made the concept of doing so make any more sense to me. Attempt one: ‘one, two, three – let go’ I said to myself, but my body and mind said ‘no no no you crazy girl’ and I clung on like Samuel, noticing the shared whiteness of our fingertips. Attempt two: now slightly embarrassed by my audience below, I let go then immediately grabbed the wall with my right hand, whacking my knees on the wall, and rendering myself stuck there. Attempt three: I now felt I needed to explain myself to those who lived on the land that is horizontal; ‘Oh god. It is really hard!! I can’t let go!’, I offered.
It occurred to me in that moment how crippling and unhelpful it can be to cling onto things, to be unable to move upwards, to be unable to let go. Only my beliefs about what would happen if I let go, were preventing me from doing so. Samuel could not let go and had to climb down the wall. He never got to experience what it felt like to overcome the fear and prove it wrong. Little tomato-turned-Cheshire cat girl – she did let go, and in doing so she climbed and beamed. So I did it. I let go. The Auto-belay made a pulling sounds as I descended the wall, and I made a little girl squeal for my finale as I hit the ground on my butt. As I let go from that wall I knew I had let go of more than those fake rocks. I had come to this course alone, afraid and unsure of what would happen. My list of excuses not to come had enabled me not to do so for the past two months. Holding onto the ideas of things I can’t do, or that could go wrong only serve to limit. I wrote this blog in the very vein of breaking boundaries and exploring potential. I was proud that day as I left the climbing centre. I was proud that I had come and tried something new, and pushed through my fears. I was proud that I was truly living life by continually learning and growing. I was proud that I was not letting worries and pain of the past keep me static, clinging onto to some little rocks on the wall that no longer served me – even if I did land on my butt.
Laila Bloggs 