Spring break, 1980. Road trip.
My University offered The Outward Bound School as an alternative to the beach, or home, during spring break.
Here is a profound quote that has stayed with me since. It was in the Outward Bound handbook each participant received. Here it is:
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“You cannot stay on the summit forever. You have to come down again. So why bother in the first place?
Just this:
What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above.
One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen.
There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up.
What one can no longer see, one can still know”.
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What does this mean at mid-life?
What we have seen in ours lives can help us move forward with the next part of our lives – the part that descends from mid-life.
What we no longer see, we can at least still know. What we do with this experience makes all the difference, in my humble opinion.
Carpe diem, jeff noel 🙂