While his heart was pounding, he looked down to see the misty air leading his sight to the far away valley below. While he brought up his gaze, his eyes met with the little clouds scattered laterally beneath. One of them looked like a staring face, and another one looked like a frowning lion!
He kept the swing up, and looked at the hook to which his rope is attached and then went past it to stare at the pinnacle of his endeavor; the mountain top that he is challenging to reach!
But suddenly, something funny happened! Striding up the mountain was a mountain goat, walking upwards almost vertically, and making impossible jumps between stones and surfaces slanted at almost 70 or 80 degrees inclination!!! The goat seemed very relaxed while doing it to the extent it frustrated him, but it brought him back to the awe to this unbelievable creation!
The goat stopped at a certain rock that had a glittery surface, and started licking the surface! He remembered those goats are hungry for salty minerals that they mine with their tongues from those rocks.
He looked inside himself for an answer to the question: how does the goat know that he needs those salts, how does he know they exist on the mountain, and how on earth does he take those risky jumps and impossible climbing gymnastics to reach there?!!!
The goat finished the licking and seemed satisfied already, at which time it started trotting in the opposite direction, climbing down in a symphony of synchronous jumps as if his limbs are fingers of a professional pianist and the rocks are the piano keys! What an artist of a creature that goat is!
He realised that the genius of the mountain goat was not only as he is climbing up, but also as he climbs down artistfully after he has met his objective! The goat is not looking for glory, and not just risking his life for Adrenalin, it is just living! And while its life is one that others see as being on the brink of danger, he is taking it easy and at peace! The goat’s heart was at peace while his feet and muscles did the job!
It shined on him that what he was doing is no match to the goat, his arrival to the top is for personal joy and his departure is to claim the glory, and that is why danger is the name of the game and a single failure can be a killer!
While he was thousands of feet high, he had not climbed the mountain in his heart yet, he was only climbing the mountain of the body, the mountain of hormones and euophoria!
He suddenly grew up, that he unlocked the rope and rushed down like an arrow! The time for the real trip was now, and right now, for too much time has already gone away!
While the spectators dropped their jaws thinking that he has given up yards away, the reality was that he had just started moving upwards now!
As he passed by it, the frowning lion in the sad cloud was now smiling wide.
Peace!
Ahmed.
Finding Truth