What It Takes

 WHAT IT TAKES

This getting older….

I could barely walk after cycling yesterday, my right leg seemed to be in permanent cramp all day. It made for an uncomfortable night.

However it’s okay, I think so anyway, this morning.

Thank God. For the impact upon us, me not able to easily do what I normally do, was quite devastating. We tread a very fine line here.

Little do people know what it takes.

Sometimes I watch those videos that urban climbers post on YouTube of themselves scaling up the side of skyscrapers, hanging only by their fingers and toes, hundreds of feet high, on flimsy looking window frames.

It’s even worse when they release one hand to make a phone call, or remove a shirt.

There’s a polish climber, Marcin Banot, who talks you through his process as he climbs for charity, in particular, the courage, the focus, the discipline and the terrific attention to breathing required.

Well, my hopes of ever doing that are far behind me now, as yesterday shows. In any case, Linda would be horrified. However it strikes me how perfect is the analogy.

Perilously hanging, without support, over a vast drop, is exactly the terrifying situation we are in, living in the context of severe, little understood illness. The danger of falling is ever present and massive. There is no rest, no relent ever. The pressure is intense. The courage and the effort to hold on, particularly for Linda, is way beyond comprehension, no one could possibly imagine just what it takes for her to cope, every moment of every day and still keep any shred of herself going.

Without discipline, without constant focus, without an immensely strong set of values, we would fall off the precipice into an unending pit of despair, hopelessness and unimaginable pain.

We totally rely on each other to stay safe. As I wrote here yesterday, you must keep looking up.

For that is where hope and new possibility lie.

Without unbelievable courage, especially on Linda’s part, we would freeze and not keep trying to climb, inch by tortuous inch, ever higher above the suffering. And we have climbed very high indeed this last three decades.

Courage is so desperately needed in the world right now. Both of us are immensely humbled by and this morning salute the courage of Alexei Navalny. May he inspire us all.