Climb

“Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first men to climb Mount Everest”.

When I first heard this sentence, all my attention was taken up by those two names and the word ‘first’, but there was something else in the sentence that I almost overlooked. The word ‘climb’.

We generally look upon the glory, the name and fame of great people and forget about the path they chose to get there. These two men would have definitely fallen thousands of times, would have been taken aback by those chilly winds of Everest, would have escaped the mouth of death and might have thought of turning back, but today they are recognized by the world only because they chose to climb… climb on.

No great achievement could have taken place if the achievers hadn’t taken the first step.

That’s the story of every successful person. No great achievement could have taken place if the achievers hadn’t taken the first step.

We cannot control the result of our actions nor do we ever know before starting how our present actions will turn tomorrow, but what we always have in our hands is the decision to commit to those actions and keep getting up when we hit the ground. A song by Miley Cyrus goes: “Ain’t about how fast I get there / Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side… It’s the climb”.

Nobody is born with greatness nor is greatness thrust upon us, but the fire to achieve that greatness, to dodge every barrier, to climb every mountain, to fight every uphill battle, to take the first step, is within us.