How did you get to be the person you are today? That’s the question I set out to answer for myself in the Strolls Down Memory Lane stories these last few weeks after I received that mail with its simple questions by @shelbystanger.
“When did you get your first wild idea, and were there signs pointing you to do it? And how did you shush the doubt in your own head and the doubters outside?”
I didn’t start out with a plan on how to write these stories. But I did think I knew what the finish line would look like. I thought I would eventually, somewhere in the past, stumble upon a story that would explain how I got here. A turning point, a plot twist of sorts. Perhaps it’s natural for a storyteller to expect to find something like that.
But I didn’t. A plot twist that explains how I got to be who I am today doesn’t exist.
As the Memory Lane stories wound their way past the Nordkapp bike ride, that first ill-fated solo kayak tour, and into how my life as a climber began –
As I touched on how I’d been shaped by curiosity and fear, the fear of falling, the fear of the unknown –
I realized that not a single step I took was ever truly a twist or a leap. These stories were all just small baby steps and wobbles into the general direction of learning, exploration and slowly getting comfortable with being pretty damn uncomfortable. Making the decision to totter on in that direction was my choice, and my contribution to my story.
But we don’t come into and exist in this world alone.
Because that’s the other thing I found: the many, many people who were a part of my story. I was never truly alone for any of it. And if there is any way to explain how I became who I am today, perhaps it’s this:
I’ve been lucky enough to have people around me who grab life by the heartstrings and giving me the courage to dare, too.
So when it comes to questions becoming?
You won’t find answers by looking only at your side of the story.
Because in the end: it takes a village to raise a child.
(Thank you to all who are a part of mine.)