If there’s one thing that will stop people from achieving their goals, it’s a wall. However, as I see it, without a wall there’s no place to build a door.

Much like life, I can stand at rivers edge and never know anything other than this place, or I can submerge myself in the river and know every place. For the former never moves, but the latter never does not.

Regardless of how foreboding it might appear, a peak without any altitude is a bump. And how many times have I ambled on top of the latter so I could fool myself into believing that I had ascended the former?

Cruel’ or a ‘tool’? For if we see pain as an adversary, we will see nothing but the former and we will forfeit the power of the latter.

I do not walk into the storm unless I have been called into the storm. For the former is arrogance and the latter is obedience.

Without mountains, we might find ourselves relieved that we can avoid the pain of the ascent, but we will forever miss the thrill of the summit. And in such a terribly scandalous trade-off, it is the absence of pain that becomes the thief of life.

Pain is nothing but growth waiting for us to give it permission to grow us up.

Too often we make it more about what stands before us, and we miss all that stands within us.

We can only climb the mountains because there’s a valley that makes the mountain a mountain.