Last year, I tried rock climbing (again), because I wanted to get over my fear of heights. And even though I was quite proud of myself the first time I managed to get six feet off the ground without getting dizzy and refusing to move, I quickly realized why the sport is such an apt metaphor for life. It's fun to scramble up and down the easy routes that you've done before. It reminds you that you can actually climb. But if you want to improve at all, you have to push yourself. And when you're really pushing yourself, especially if you're a muscularly-challenged female that gets faint on balconies, each new handhold feels like the most impossible thing you've ever done. And when you do manage to swing yourself in just the right way so as to progress a few inches upward you can only be proud for so long, because the next handhold will now be the most impossible thing you've ever done. And so it will continue until you run out of places to put your hands.
We discussed in Theory and Practice of Fiction last week how the present moment, and therefor our enjoyment of the present moment, only lasts three seconds. (The assigned reading was on neurobiology and physiology and its relationship to consciousness and time.) Three seconds is about as long as my overwhelming joy at grabbing the next hold while ten feet up lasts, and about half as long as my acceptance letter happy dance lasts, because acceptance letters are rare and I try and savor that feeling as long as possible. But after the moment, there's the next handhold to grab, and the next piece to write - or, if I'm really courageous, the next PhD application.
Frequently I forget, as I'm scrabbling to read assigned material and make deadlines, that I'm making any progress at all. And though I can't quantify what I've learned, or when I've learned it, I can feel its influence. When I look at the pieces I wrote last year and before I'm quite embarrassed, which apparently happens to most artists who consistently work on their craft, but unlike before I now know what to change in order to fix those old pieces, to make them into something I can be willing to acknowledge as mine.
And, for the sake of pure self-indulgence, an example of a handhold made where elation lasted beyond a single moment: UEA hosted a women's fencing tournament yesterday, and I beat all three of the sabruers on Oxford's women's team. That possibly made up for never having been able to go to school in Oxford. If you can't join 'em, beat 'em with a +10 aggregate indicator and gloat quietly while flexing your nearly nonexistent biceps. Now if only they'd let me fence on the men's team...
