What are you willing to do for your dream to come true? How far will you push yourself? Are you willing to sacrifice some things in order to discover the best version of yourself? The answer to all of these questions has a secret ingredient called the wonderful obsession. Not until your dream becomes an obsession will you be willing to step out of your comfort zone and go for it.
The memoir book of Tommy Caldwell The Push. A climber’s journey of endurance, risk and going beyond limits illustrates the marvelous human nature in the pursuit of a worthy goal. In 2015 freeclimber Tommy spent 19 days summiting Yosemite’s vertical 3000-foot Dawn Wall. He tried to do that for 7 years and he did not let failure stop him. I really loved the drive and motivation behind Tommy’s push.
You might think that this book is all about climbing, nature, rocks and sports. You could not be further from the truth. What touched my heart was the fact that Tommy revealed the less glamorous life of a climber beyond the achievements one might see in the public space. He takes us back to his childhood, where his desire to prove himself beyond the nerdy incompetent odd tag that people were giving him grew stronger and stronger year by year. His father, a bodybuilding enthusiast and nature lover, instilled in him the passion for climbing. His mother proved to be the encouraging one, pushing him through when his father would show disappointment or anger . Making your parents happy should never be a child’s goal, but I guess we all get traumatized in our childhood somehow and Tommy is really sincere and through his introspective process in his book he slowly reveals the reasons behind his wonderful obsession.
My favourite part of the book began when Tommy fell in love with his first wife, Beth. Oh how I wish they would have stayed together! Unfortunately they divorced. But what I really liked was the ability to watch how a lovestory unfolds only to end years later because of different circumstances. The life of those two together wasn’t easy. They went through a lot of trauma together, they got captured in Kyrgyzstan and held hostages and the financial struggles brought by a climber’s career ( it is not so well paid as you might think) put a lot of pressure on their relationship. I will not disclose more details as I think that you will actually enjoy reading this part. I am never tired of learning things about relationships from any real life story. Even if it does not end well.
The second wife of Tommy is Becca. A very spiritual and God oriented woman. Now, looking back at Tommy’s words in his book, I can clearly understand why it worked out with Becca and not with Beth. Tommy admits that he has changed. I believe that a big role in relationships is your own inner state and your emotional maturity and knowing how you want your life to look long term. It was such a joy to read about their love story and also about their tough conversations turning out to be different than those he had with Beth. I suppose that a successful lovestory has some key ingredients such as the ability to have respectful difficult conversations, to have commmon goals, to have individual freedom and trust. Once the trust between Beth and Tommy was broken, it was nearly impossible to repair. I also saw that things
came natural with Beth and that she didn’t have to squeeze commitment out of Tommy. They have two beautiful kids now and it is a joy to see how their marriage lasted through the ups and downs of life.
When Tommy climbed Dawn Wall in 2015 he had already lost an index finger. He trained and he continued to pursue his dream even when doctors told him he will never be able to climb again. This is how powerful is a dream! Your ears block any negativity, any possibility of failure and you just go go go. I think that reading powerful memoir books of people who have overcome adversity can be such a huge booster for any individual who feels stuck or who wants to see how success is achieved.
I selected a couple of nice quotes from the book, I hope they will inspire you to read it!
Better to have struggled , to have tried, than to not have seized the opportunity at all
In a very real way, I’d gone to school that summer in Bolivia; I learned what really mattered to me. To this day , what I remember most is the deep impression the porters made on my fourtenn-year-old self. They seemed content, despite their lack of material wealth. I was from a different world, couldn’t even speak the same language, yet I felt a bond with them unlike any I had with kids my age back home. I had been feelling the early pressure of our society telling me to go to college, get a good job, and make money. Deep down it felt like a false lure, one without a meaning. The thought of conforming, of settling for less than the adventurous life I craved, scared me more than any mountain. Thanks to my dad, Mike Donahue, and those porters, I was starting to unlock essential feelings about myself and how I viewed the world and my place in it. I started thinking that climbing could be my path to what I considered a greater truth – that simplicity, solitude, and natural beauty were the real gems in life.
The idea that I could be the best at something was the most tempting elixir in the world. Those childhood times of feeling invisible, pitied , or ignored drove me to desire climbing success more than anything else.
It was our first night on the wall, and my twenty-second birthday. For a moment the universe was reduced to the flame and the space it illuminated. I blew out the candle and our worlds broadened to the sky around us, billions of vibrant stars, unpolluted by all we had left behind.
By March 2001, El Capitan had become my closest companion. Nonjudgemental and brutally honest. Challenging and always inspiring, I rediscovered Yosemite’s splendor, and the beauty in feeling small. In the face of climbing something so massive and magnificent, my stress seemed to fade.
Early in my climbing career, success came from improving efficiency, not pushing through preconceived limits. Then in Kyrgyzstan I got a glimpse of the other side, I discovered that in those moments when all seems lost, when you feel that you can go no further, sometimes a survival instinct kicks in. Your body is flush with energy and you feel as if anything is possible. It must be built into our genes, a part of human evolution since the dawn of time. I was desperately curious about the edge of human capability. I knew I could do much more.
Jim told me about Joanne, a former Ironman triathlon champion. He described how she went from being a world champion athlete to battling through cancer. When he talked about his wife his voice grew soft. He was filled with admiration and compassion, and I was struck by how his tenderness didn’t seem to come despite the struggles in their lives, but because of them.
When you’ve got nothing to lose, it’s no longer a disaster.
Becca had been very clear that the man she was going to marry would have to be a Christian. She loved me, but she loved God more.
When the skin on our fingertips disintegrated, we taped them up and kept climbing. I felt a bubbling deep inside, a love for this place and its beauty that emerged with my desire to climb. The wall exists like a canvas, and it is your vision, ability, and creativity that turn it into a route. It’s the sort of drive that’s impossible to explain to those who haven’t been engulfed by a singluar, unbridled passion
I don’t know if it was something innate that I had to grow out of, or just the mysteries of interpersonal chemistry, or probably both, but in my previous marriage I often felt ruled by self conscioussness. It was nobody’s fault at all, but when I was with Beth I was only a boy. Now everything felt different. I felt confident with Becca. Her energy and inner calm flowed into me. She held me to a higher standard. I could feel myself changing, rising, becoming a better man.
With the exception of falling in love, the Dawn Wall had become the most positive and engaging experience of my life.
The cruxes in my life have been problems born out of want and need. I needed my dad to love me for who I was, not what I did. I needed Beth to love me for who I was, not to use me for her own security. I needed the Dawn Wall as my own way to heal.
If the secret to happiness was the ability to find joy in the little things that had been in front of you the entire time, then the Dawn Wall was truly a Zen-master teacher.
I believe my gift in life is that of desire. My greatest expression of desire, and of embracing the unknown, is in my climbing.