Ancestors

Toot

Written by M.S. Bellows, Jr. on 2025-01-20 at 18:26

The climber Mark Twight tells a story about his friend who was benighted on an Alpine cliff in winter with his climbing partner. Basically, they had a 6-inch ledge to sit on, roped in, while a storm raged around them. No tent, no sleeping bag, no stove. The other guy asked, "what do we do now?" And Twight's friend answered, "now we suffer."

Which sounds like a horrible and demoralizing story, but it actually isn't. The two climbers survived until morning, got themselves moving again, summited, and made it over the mountain to the smooth path down to warmth and food and friendship and safety.

It's easy to catastrophize and say, "everything is over!," when actually, no, it's just that sometimes we have to suffer through a dark night before it's morning again. It really is helpful to understand that this is just suffering, and that it will end, and especially that it's okay to stop climbing for a while and just protect yourself and your partner and huddle up and endure the suffering without expecting anything more of yourself, and then it will be morning and you will go on and things will become better.

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Descendants

Written by Justin Derrick on 2025-01-20 at 19:43

@msbellows All of this is contingent on surviving (or merely not being maimed) by the challenge. Being turned into a frozen dope on a rope doesn’t sound inspiring.

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Written by Karl Auerbach on 2025-01-21 at 00:19

@msbellows In the meantime however, while waiting, one can become a partisano actively opposing the regime. Such opposition need not be violent or criminal. Today's celebration of MLK reminds us that being a partisano can be effective even without violence or illegality.

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