When You Fall, Get Up and Go On.

When my grandson was about nineteen months old he and I were running in the yard. At one point he fell down and as he was there on his back I heard him say, "OK."

I later asked my daughter, his mom, about that and she said that he always does that. He's letting you know he's alright.

We can fall a lot when we're climbing any of our mountains - loneliness, depression, long-term illness, marital struggles and job loss.  And yes, it's wise to avoid falls when we can. Climbers know that certain ones can be deadly. That's why roping together is pretty important.

However, it's easy to think that because we fall on one of life's climbs that we're broken, too injured to continue or a miserable failure. In reality we would be better to anticipate that we WILL fall, it's going to happen and it's pretty normal.

I remember when I first learned to ski that falling at the beginning was more the norm than the exception. In fact if you never fall you'll never try anything new or helpfully daring.  Falling is likely an indicator that you're making some progress.

So what can we learn from a fall?  We can discover something not to do again. Sometimes our fall was from carelessness, not being attentive or ignorance. Learn from it so you can avoid that mistake again.

We can be getting practice to do something we've never done. I know that in climbing you often need to try a move a bunch of times before you get it. But with enough reps and falls, you reach a level of ability and confidence you didn't have before.  What if you would have stopped and just turned around? Think of what you would have missed.


Third, falls can connect you with other caring people. Sometimes it's through a fall that you meet someone who will make up for your weakness, teach you something you didn't know and become a friend who you will climb with more.

Falling on your climb lately?  Chances are you're really "OK."  Get up and keep going.