Toughness

There is a powerful relationship between the way we experience our bodies and the way we relate to the wider world.

In a society structured around making life easier and safer, we sometimes forget that “toughness” is more than the ability to handle wearing day-old underwear without complaint or eating a medium-well steak when we ordered it medium-rare. Sitting in climate-controlled buildings with Google at our fingertips, it is easier than ever to avoid a life where being tough is a prerequisite. In fact, developing toughness can be down right difficult in our insulated world. The insulation of mind and body also shields our ability to feel: we forget how to connect with our environment; how to feel the fragility of skin exposed to wind and sun.

The process of developing toughness, therefore, is a process of regaining feeling, both physically and psychically. It is pushing harder when you don’t know if you can make it; acknowledging fear, uncertainty, disappointment, failure... and moving forward anyways. It can look like asking your boss for a raise, or using your last reserves to carry a friend down a mountain when there is no other way. Toughness includes moments of weakness when you are so exhausted from fear and exertion that all you can do is cling to your partner while you take turns breaking down. It says “yes” to showing up, even when the outcome is unknown.

Pema Chodron says, “only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.” Real indestructibility comes from stripping away the physical and emotional barriers that we invested years building up to protect ourselves. Paradoxically, toughness comes from having fewer walls and greater vulnerability. We are each like a rock in the river: only achieving a high gloss after being tumbled over and over.
 

 In the words of Paulo Coelho, “disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools that God uses to show us the way.” My own trials over the past decade have helped me understand the need to live an unfiltered life. What I didn’t expect to discover in this process of “un-insulating” was that my unfiltered self actually attracts some pretty amazing people and circumstances: there is a mind-body-spirit integrity that allows for deeper personal connections, shared adventures, ecstatic mountain runs, and volcano ski descents. Although I wouldn’t say I’ve found my life’s “purpose” let alone a career, for the first time in memory I feel like I am truly alive.

Surviving in Nature requires more than a grit-your-teeth-because-it’s-cold kind of toughness: weakness also has to have a seat at the table. Even a blister on my toe or nagging thought like “why hasn’t he called me yet” are factors that can have tremendous consequences in the backcountry if they go unacknowledged. The mountains remind me that there is no room for shame, excuses, apologies, or ego, because I will always be the weaker partner. And facing my own weakness is the toughest thing I know.


Note: Opening quote by Frank Forencich Change Your Body, Change the World 

Image: Trying to convince Jill's toes to do just one more climb, Tieton River, by Elie Egan, 2015

Further reading: 
Stop Asking for Easy: A Manifesto for Doing Hard Things Voluntarily
What Can Rich Sensory Experiences Teach Children?