This picture is of the hike I took on my last birthday. The trail starts at 6,223 feet elevation and ends at a little over 10,000 feet so the views are amazing all along this beautiful trail. I didn’t make it to the very top of the mountain, but I didn’t mind, I think the climb leading up to the look out where we stopped was more fun than getting to the final peak. For some on the trail it was all about the end, the goal, the destination the 10,000 feet top. Infact as I was coming down a few hikers asked how the peak was, when I said I didn’t go all the way they acted like my hike was a waist but to me just to get out and hike some was all I wanted to do.
Isn’t it like us though, to think life is all about the mountain tops and the final goal instead of the peace of just being where we are. The simple joy in just purely living. We tend to miss so much when we put the goal ahead of our day-to-day life.
I think that one of the reasons we can get so anxious and unhappy with our life is that we expect to have one big life on the mountain top. One goal after another, almost as if we would like to take a helicopter ride from mountain top to mountain top so we never have to deal with the hard climb, the sweat or dirt that gets us up to that beautiful top. What if life happens and we end up just only making it to a lookout point but not the final peak? Would that still be, okay? Would you still find the beauty at the lookout point, or would you feel like your life isn’t as good as the other people who “made” it to the mountain top.
When I find myself looking at the other people who have that kind of life. The people that seem to make it to the final top and stay there, I can be happy for them or start to get envious and not be happy with just my lookout spot but for me I choose to be happy, not trade in my peace for envy. Maybe my life is just a lookout point and not the glorious mountaintop but that’s okay too because it’s my life and my lookout point. The great expression, “In acceptance lieth peace” is so true.
(Foot note the expression is from a poem by Amy Carmichael but my mom would say this to me all the time growing up)
