Rock climbing

 I have talked about this phenomena with several people, and mostly they share my view. 

Rock climbing bonds friends. There is something magical that happens when you are tied to someone at the other side of the rope. A strange chemistry is brewing in your brain when your life is in the hands of someone else. It creates trust, it makes you humble and most importantly, it makes you feel strangely peaceful. It also trains you to be patient. You can't rush climbing, you can take any route, short or long, but never muscle it, gravity always wins, all it takes is patience and a lot of practice.

I never competed in rock climbing, nor went in extreme conditions or trails, but climbing always felt appealing to me for its simplicity and gracefulness. Its a freestyle sport, you can climb wherever, whenever, however, as long as you enjoy and you take well established safety precautions. 

The health benefits are many, you gain upper body strength, yet your body tends not to gain weight, gravity being a bitch and all that. Besides, after some skill improvement, you realize how sloppy you have been all your life when walking or running, never paying attention where you put your feet on the ground. It makes you a lot more careful of your surroundings, and lot more observant of what is happening around you. You develop more proficient gut feeling that tells you when something is about to break. You realize that most of it is safe improvisation, and to succeed you have to adopt quickly and change your angle of approach. 

Then the epiphany comes and hits you: Faced with problem, sometimes in order to go up, you have to go down couple of steps and find more suitable route. We are all different and we all can succeed given enough time.

In a curved space-time, the only thing that alters our paths is gravity