Height Wants To Be Climbed

 This week's quotation, by the early 20th century German writer and poet, Paul Richard Luck, reads,  "Height cannot be given, but it wants to be climbed."

"Height... wants to be climbed." I guess he means that we often view an upward path as a challenge, and that we will only be able to see what is at the top, once we have made the effort of climbing it. Nothing comes for free - "height cannot be given". 

Except when it can... I can still remember my huge sense of indignation as a child, when we had climbed Mount Snowdon in North Wales, and found the summit buzzing with tourists who had caught the train up from Llanberis, four and a half snaking miles below. I felt they had cheated, by not climbing the mountain as we had done.

But generally, we cannot attain the heights without doing some hard work to get there. As Luck said, "height cannot be given." And this is true of any field of human endeavour, much though we might wish it were otherwise. For example, I would love to be able to play the piano as well as a concert pianist, but I know that this will never happen without daily hours of practice over a long period of time. And it's not a sufficiently high priority for me, so I don't have the motivation to put in the necessary work.

Writing, on the other hand, is a priority, and I practice my craft for at least an hour each day (this is fiction / creative non-fiction writing rather than the writing I do as part of my role as a Unitarian minister). And because I have put in the time and effort, my writing is beginning to improve. Like most writers, I will never be completely satisfied with it, because it's always possible to do better. Sometimes, I read the words of others - writers I admire, such as George Eliot, Joseph Conrad, J.R.R. Tolkien and Terry Pratchett - and just sigh quietly to myself. Because I will probably never write as well as they do. But by constant pracice, I can get better, can learn to find my own voice.

I believe there is something in every human being, which impels us towards the heights. Which fills us with motivation and enthusiasm for our chosen vocation (whatever that is), so that we don't mind putting the work in, so long as it gets us a little closer to those seemingly unattainable heights. Which makes us strive to do the best we can, each day.

And I don't think it is ambition, although that is part of it. I think it is something purer, something more selfless, something we experience through grace. If attaining our own personal "height" is sufficiently important to us, we will carry on plodding upwards, one step at a time, because it is natural to follow the best we know, to do our best to reach the elusive heights.