Home at Green Climbers

Now that I have been traveling for two months, I can admit that it has been almost entirely about climbing. I crossed the border to Laos two weeks ago and all I have seen is the Green Climbers Home (GCH) and its nearby town Thakhek. It was not my intention to only climb, but several factors made it the most appealing choice for me. Practically thinking, instead of constantly hauling my heavy backpack around it is easier to settle in one place for longer. And I like making friends with other climbers, as they have common interests, generally open attitude and good sense of humor.

Thakhek main street

Tuktuk between town and camp

Most importantly, climbing gives purpose to otherwise carefree traveling. While sightseeing is quite effortless, climbing requires physical condition and mental determination. Interestingly, now that I have no "real" worries about work, relationships or such, I have began to focus my goal-orientedness towards climbing. At the camp people only climb, eat, sleep and talk (about climbing). Therefore it is easy to start thinking that life equals climbing.

Green Climbers Home

Since I am an ambitious person I naturally want to get good at climbing, preferably now rather than later. I am bored of being the beginner, for whose projects strong climbers put quickdraws as their warmup. When I see beautiful lines beyond my current grade level, I get motivated to train harder so that later on I can hop on them. Besides, often hard routes have cleaner falls, thus making them less scary than easy routes. Taken these motives, I arrived to GCH with a goal to climb my first 6C. I literally cried after top roping a few 6Cs and realizing that I am just not yet skilled enough to lead them cleanly.

Those disappointments made me think about perfectionism. While more relaxed people can be satisfied after a couple of fun climbs, I can honestly say I had a good day only if I have given my 100% best on challenging routes. This is impossible on a daily basis, though, because for me climbing is still mostly about winning my fear and I do not have eternal mental capacity to push myself through scariness. After thinking this through, I decided to chill out a bit and keep on smiling - even though I climbed only mostly 6As. To say something performance-wise positive, I went on new 6Bs and tried to onsight them without knowing how they would be like; often taking a few falls but almost always finishing.

The roof

For some reason, fear of falling was a big topic of discussion at GCH. What I am experiencing - not daring to push through cruzes, climbing clumsily instead of concentrating on proper technic, getting disappointed when giving up - is common amongst many people. Also strong climbers get scared but they psych themselves to stay calm, for their willpower to succeed exceeds their fear. What helps me to climb more relaxedly and enjoy it, is repeatedly taking practice falls; on safe routes, when I feel stressed on a weird move I just let go to experience the fall. Scariness often results from unknown, so the more I fall the safer I feel. I believe I can become an OK climber if I manage to overcome the fear barrier, which is a gradual process I keep working on.

Safely sitting on a tufa to clip ;) 

From Laos I am heading to Cambodia. It is finally time to take a break from climbing and just be a tourist. In addition to improving in my main sport, this climbing psychology thinking has helped me to identify my personality also in a wider perspective; I must be engaged in some productive activity and set goals to achieve - but I need not perform at my maximum all the time.

About doing the right thing

I am alone. But I cannot move because I am stuck in a tight crowd of people. I am spending the New Years Eve on my own in Bangkok; I observe how neatly thousands of people queue to go see the fireworks, what they do through their smart phone cameras. I have not got any new years resolutions in my mind. Except for maybe one thing that I have been thinking about lately: Doing the right thing. Universally.

New Year's dinner

 I never break the law, but sometimes I knowingly make ethically wrong choices. For example, I may kiss a guy who has got a girlfriend. I have never met the girl, so she is just a stranger over whose happiness I have no responsibility. You may ask why I do so if I know it is not good. Well, simply because it gives me immediate wellness. Besides it is him cheating, not me.

After a while I am not very satisfied, though. I can tell myself that everyone does the same and it is not impacting anyone in my circles. However, if you scale up you can see that universally I am doing the wrong thing. What I am doing is hurting someone: the girlfriend who I do not know and who does not know me. If you think about the big picture, there would be no such wrongfulness – either towards others or yourself – if everyone considered everyone regardless of knowing them. If I thought about the girlfriend's feelings, there would be one less unhappy person around.

Additionally, when you do wrong together with someone else you learn to know that s/he is not ethically strong, either. In other circumstances s/he could do the same to you if s/he got immediate benefit of it. This thinking applies to other minor wrongfulness, too, like speaking negatives behind one's back, taking credit for someone else's work or blaming another one for your own mistakes.

In the long run I want to feel dignity over my actions, no matter if anyone I know gets angry at me. I want to be proudly above unethical people – to do the right thing for the universal sake of it, not for the fear of punishment. Still, to be an honest person, I do not make a new years resolution about this. I know I will occasionally keep doing the wrong thing, but I promise to at least consider its universal impacts.

A wrong thing to do