The Chair

“It is good to have an end to journey toward;

but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

--Ernest Hemingway

Have you ever noticed how much life happens in a chair?  

Your newborn is rocked to sleep in a chair.

The student takes her math test in a chair.

Couple’s plan their future in a chair.

The corporate board builds it’s empire in a chair.

All great campfire stories are told in a chair.

Grandpa re-lives the good-ole-days in a chair.

And we reminisce and remember those we have lost in a chair.

Yet, chairs really don’t get the respect that they deserve.  

If someone spends too much time on one, we call that person a couch potato. When someone is being too loud or obnoxious, we tell them to ‘sit down and shut up’ (in a chair, of course).  Heck, even one of the largest manufacturers of chairs chose the rather less than heroic name of ‘Lazy Boy’ for their chairs.

And my idea of an epic vacation seldom includes what I’m planning on doing in a chair (unless it was flying the U.S.S. Enterprise around the moon a few times – ‘take us home, number one!’)

You see, it’s the destination that we aim for, that we strive for and that we train for.  It’s that 5.10d . . . or V9 . . . or South African crag . . . or whatever the dream.  And that’s good.  That’s very good.  We need goals and dreams.  They inspire us to work harder and to give a little more.  They reward us with another notch, a feeling of success, or at least another awesome Instagram post. And they teach us that anything is possible if we just commit.

But the real life, the stuff that the great stories are made of, the memories that will fill those good-ole-day stories that we will re-live time and again when we are grandpas and grandmas, those happen more in the down times, those social times when we all just hang out and share experiences, or offer encouragement, or maybe just sit there.

And so, if you take a look around Bliss Climbing and Fitness, you will find a number of chairs. That’s because we know, just like you do, that while climbing is the world’s greatest sport; life happens, more often than not, between the climbs.  In the chairs. 

Follow your Bliss,

David