So, meanwhile, over on my Facebook, I've been posting some quotes that struck me. I'm sharing them now with you, my OS family.

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow. – Friedrich Nietzsche

And sometimes? Seeing the peak ahead of you brings you back down to the base. You feel like you can never reach that pinnacle – the pinnacle where you see many of your friends (and heroes, because most of the time they are one and the same), and you want to be there with them. Oh my god, how you want to be up there with them.

But then? Then you speak to your friends, and you realize that they see you where you see them. And it makes your brain take a turn for the weird, and the introspective. And you find out that you are walking that same road. And then …

…

Then you look at who you are now, and where you are now. And you compare it to the past “you”, and realize, why, yes. Yes. You HAVE been climbing. And it hasn’t been in vain. You are higher today than you were yesterday. You are higher than you were ten years ago. And you are still climbing. And holy shit – what a journey that has been!

And sometimes …

… sometimes even though you want to see yourself at that peak, and beat yourself up over NOT being on that peak …

… sometimes …

… sometimes you realize …

… you are still climbing (and running) up that hill.

And you will be doing that, for a long, long time. And it’s not really so much the destination, but the journey. It’s not actually the pinnacle (but at the same time it is, it really is), but it is also the path you take to the top. It’s the friendships you make along the way. The different roads pointed out to you; those roads that are different from your own vision, but seen through the lens of those who love you.

And? You find that you are truly okay with that.

It’s the winding paths that you have found on that hill. And how you approach them. Sometimes you walk a path with friends, and sometimes you go and explore on your own. That is where you find the magic and mystery of life; it hasn’t been found at the pinnacle (at least not yet, since you aren’t quite there). It’s in the everyday. It’s in the minutia. It’s in the wonder and beauty of the ordinary.  

It’s in the unknown of following that darn wascally wabbit down that stupid hole. Where you get to enjoy, and hate, the tea party. Where, sooner or later, you escape back into “sanity”, but still cleave to that other. That unknown.

And that unknown?

It is us.

Let’s just laugh at our own foibles, shall we?