How many times have you climbed up the ladder of a slide–or a mountain–all the while thinking, “Ooh! I can’t wait to stay up here forever!”?
Never, you say?
Yeah, me neither.
It’s because we know that our climb–no matter how challenging or time-consuming it may be–is meant to take us to a temporary destination.
I’ve mentioned the idea of a challenging hike before. The most beautiful vistas always seem to come after the most grueling hikes. And when we are climbing or hiking, we know that we are not headed to a permanent destination, but rather a temporary state of glory.
Why, then, do we get so confused when the same things happen in life?
I was thinking about this concept recently as I watched my little girl playing on a playground with several different slides and lots of ways to climb up.
Somehow in our everyday lives, we get discouraged and even self-critical of our consistent existence on the ground. We look up at where we want to be, or perhaps where we have once been, and we wish we were still there. We wonder why we ever left, or we wonder what mistakes we made that brought us back down to where we started. We forget the joys of something as simple as a ride on a slide. The fun is not just in reaching the top and looking out over the playground, but in the action of sliding back down.
Was the climb in vain? No! Without the climb, the fun return down the slide would never be possible.
A Frequent Slider
I have a friend who considered herself a successful career woman. She loved her demanding job and felt qualified and deserving of the role she’d achieved. But then she chose to step down when she had children. My friend throttled her career and moved to part-time status so that she could devote more time and energy to her babies. Then she returned to the workforce when her babies were all in school. She climbed back into successful roles and a career anyone would be proud of. Then her husband came to her with an idea. My friend sacrificed her career and moved to a different country to support her husband in chasing his dream. Now she works from home, inspiring women and doing things she loves, though her salary is a far cry from what it once was. My friend has been up and down the slide a few times.
And she’s human. So some days she relishes the fact that she got to watch her babies grow up and that she now gets to see her husband living his dream and she still gets to do fulfilling work and be home when her kids get home. But other days, she pines for the days when she was sought-after and respected as an authority in her field. She misses the paycheck that she felt equated to her valuable contributions to the world.
It’s In All of Us
I think we all do things like this sometimes. We go down the slides of life, intentionally. We know that they will be fun and will take us back down to where we started, and deep down we feel they are what we know we want to do. And when we initially make our descent, we are probably OK with that. But some time after the ride is over and we find ourselves back on solid—and flat—ground, we yearn for the top again and either we rush to the ladder or we wish for the ladder. We want to be back on top, even though we know that it will once again be temporary.
Do we forget that it is temporary? Do we actually wish for something that is unattainable? I don’t know.
My thoughts are simple: let’s enjoy the slide. Enjoy the climb and all that enables us to do. Enjoy the view from the top, and enjoy every second of the slide down, even if it is fast or bumpy or a little scarier than we originally thought. We’re not on the playground forever. Let’s make the most of our time here.
My Recent Slide
In July, my monthly pageviews on Pinterest were 198,000! That was a record high for me! I was generating lots of traffic to my blog and new followers on social media because they were pinning my content and following the links I posted. I was so excited!
But then I switched my pins to “rich pins” at the same time that two different popular pins that I had innocently pinned to my boards were removed because someone else had taken credit for them when they shouldn’t have. My monthly pageviews plummeted to 50,000, then 40,000. I was so sad! I just kept thinking “What did I do?” But other than those two things I mentioned, I wasn’t doing anything else differently than I was before. I just kept thinking, How did my numbers shrink so quickly?
But then I remembered this lesson about the climb and the slide. I am grateful for my time with 198,000 monthly pageviews. The timing was perfect. It happened when I was celebrating my blogiversary and I was able to help spread the word to so many more viewers about my friends and the giveaways they supplied that week. But I couldn’t stay there forever. And now that my numbers are down, I can look back with gratitude at the time when my numbers were higher and I can be grateful it happened at all. Maybe I will regain or surpass those numbers in the future. But in the meantime, I will celebrate what I’ve already accomplished and recognize the fun I had on the slide. And I’ll make the climb again.
Don’t Let the Pressure Stop You
I’ve heard best-selling authors say that the hardest thing to do is write a new book after their current books do well. They feel this immense pressure to stay on top. Like an impossible expectation. Eventually they have to move past that and push forward, accepting that they may be climbing up a different mountain or a different slide’s ladder and this outcome may not be the same. They may not reach the same heights, but they will someday reach a top. They can accept that and push forward—and up—or they can avoid the risk by staying on the ground and never writing again.
This is true no matter what your field. You always have two choices: climb back up the ladder and prepare for the slide back down or stay on the ground. Artists, teachers, professional athletes, lawyers, entertainers, investors, parents, entrepreneurs, CEOs; they may have their time on top and they may achieve different heights, but none of them remains on top forever.
And that’s OK.
So, friend, wherever you are with your current slide, I hope you will find joy. Enjoy the moment you are in right now. Because that is all we can do. We started the climb for a reason and we know that the end result will be worthwhile and when we wish to be back at the top again, we can celebrate that we ever got to be there in the first place. We can see the fun in the slide down. And then we can climb again.
That is a life well lived.
I love the analogy of the slide and you broke it down so well that it really makes sense. Life is so much easier when we don’t focus too hard on the here and now so we can see the bigger picture better.
Thanks! I think we need a whole lot more excuses to celebrate and see the joy in our current lives, regardless of where we are on the playground.