Lazy, random snowflakes drift down outside my window already. The sun didn’t come up this morning. Instead, a gradually gray lightness gently rocked the world awake out of its darkness. I’d long been awake already, having had one of those random and quite infrequent nights of poor rest, waking up at 3:35 in the morning and never really getting back to sleep. At one point, I was starting to drift off into a dream of climbing, until I put my hang into a big hueco, dug back deep in it, and felt a couple of mice crawling around in the soft nest of grass they’d created in this dark hole they’d thought would be a safe place. I recoiled, and woke myself right back up, and that was it—no more sleep for me, despite good thoughts and gentle brainwaves.
By 6:10, I’d had enough of drifting around in semi-sleepy mind-land, so I got out of bed. I am sore after the last two training days, more sore than I’ve been, which to me indicates that I dug deeper and pushed harder than I’ve been able to yet. I found my thoughts wandering to, “Why do I even do this to myself?” and, “Why do I want to rock climb harder?” and those sorts of contemplations, which I admit have at times been prevalent in my inner life ever since I first started rock climbing more than half my lifetime ago.
But lately, more and more, I have been putting an end to such trains of thought with increasing frequency and discipline. The thing I don’t understand is, why do we always have to ask why about the things we love in this life (unless, of course, they’re damaging and/or detrimental to our wellbeing or that of those around us)? Why do we have to pick ourselves and our loves apart, instead of just accepting them and embracing them wholeheartedly as components of who we are and part of what makes us unique as individuals?
As a small child, before my memories even begin, I loved animals. My security blanket was a Steiff stuffed moose that I creatively named “Moosey” (other inspired monikers I came up with included “Squirrelly,” “Racoony,” and “Little Racoony”). I would often pretend to be a dog or a cat, covering all four of my “paws” with socks and padding around the house on all fours. Once, my mother came into my bedroom and panicked because I had vanished from the bed, only to discover me eventually half-asleep under the bed, sucking my thumb and petting the rug. To my prim ‘n’ proper grandmother’s horror and dismay, every human doll she bequeathed upon me was instantly stripped and summarily relegated to being flung, nude, into the deep dark depths of the back of my closet. The clothes would then be used to dress up one of my stuffed animals. I probably had 500 or more by the time my childhood was through.
Once, at the grocery store, I was merrily pushing around my little kid’s cart, following my mother as she grocery shopped. I actually remember this incident, because it confused me so much. The animal I’d chosen to put in the baby seat for the day was my ultra-cool stuffed oyster (named “Oyster”), who had a light-orange body that snapped out of his shell. I’d snapped him out of his shell and dolled him up in a lovely pink dress trimmed with white lace, from which his oversized googly plastic brown eyes bugged out, along with his delightfully enormous tongue. A kindly old woman came tottering over to us and said, “Let’s take a look at your baby, dearie,” only to recoil in horror a half-second later when she got close enough for a clear view of my “baby.” “Ewwww,” she snarled in disgust. “What IS that thing?”
One of my earliest memories is of our family getting our first real animal, a golden retriever named Fred (named by my brother for Grover’s horse on Sesame Street), when I was two years old. Both Fred and the cage he was transported in seemed huge; later I’d find this amusing when seeing the cage at a much greater size myself, and realizing how relatively small six-week-old golden retriever puppies actually are. I adored Fred, but he never thought I was above him in the family “pack.” He actually bit me twice, once for jumping on him when he was asleep, and once because I tried to adorn him with a toy watch about 50 times, and about 50 growls later, he gave up and snapped at my hand. He didn’t hurt me either time, and both times, my mom told me it was my fault. I totally forgave him.
Another love of mine in childhood was collecting bugs, of which I had no fear, except for bees and spiders (this continues into today—not the collecting, but the fear). I still would capture spiders, by positioning myself strategically with the jar in one hand on one side of the web, the lid on the other. I would then slam them together, and screw the lid on tight, and then watch my prize in fascination until I released it or it died. I convinced my first-grade class that I had a trained caterpillar. I read books about insects and learned everything I could about these easily accessible, ready-made “pets.”
I could go on and on with the animal stories from my childhood, but the point of all of this is that I was born this way. I did not ask to love animals, nor did I at any point consciously choose to love animals. But as a small child, it never once even occurred to me to question from whence this profound love of creatures and critters had stemmed. I simply accepted it as a part of who I was, and gladly explained to anyone who asked that I didn’t like to play with dolls, I preferred stuffed animals, thank you very much. There didn’t have to be a why. It just was as it was (and to this day is as it is, by the way—I still adore animals and often acknowledge their existence as if they’re people, as in, “Hi, horse, how’s it going?” or “Hello, dog!”).
As I’ve thought back about this, I’ve thought it would be so useful for myself and probably others, too, if we could carry some of this simple self acceptance of individuality and personal preferences into our adult lives and worlds. We don’t need to question or explain all of our loves, nor should we necessarily want to. Even more, we also don’t need to question or demand explanation of the loves and preferences of others in our lives. To do so is so often exhausting, exasperating, and pointless. Asking questions like, “Why do you love me?” or “Why do you love rock climbing so much?” or “Why don’t you like skiing?” or any such thing demands people to try to make half-a#$ed explanations or justifications for themselves and their feelings, to no avail or real purpose, since such efforts will only be half-truths, at best.
Why do we need to know why? Why can’t we simply just accept some things about ourselves as simply being the way that they are, not requiring explanations or long, drawn-out intellectual thought processes? The truth of the matter is that we will never really be able to fully put into words the why of any of our deeply held passions or pursuits in our lives, not to others, and not even to ourselves, no matter how hard we try. And it’s a waste of precious time, anyhow. These core elements of our beings rest beyond the frail reaches of our symbolic language, which can, at best, only give us a pale, one-dimensional echo of the fullness involved in being an individual human being.
Sometimes, there is no why, and there doesn’t need to be a why. There just is, and that is all.
In addition to my professional rock climbing career, I have also worked as a succesful freelance writer for more than a decade. See 
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