Whoever Watches the Wind

People often imagine summit days get chosen weeks out from a calendar of perfect weather. Clear sky, no wind, warm rock. Anyone who has climbed high knows the truth. The perfect day never comes. There are only workable windows, short and scrappy and never quite what you ordered, and the whole art of the mountains is recognising workable and moving the moment it arrives. The climbers who hold out for perfect go home.

It’s worth chewing on how much of life works exactly like that, and how bad we all are at it at sea level.

The not-yet list

We lose more good things to not yet than we ever lose to no. We all carry a not-yet list, and we know the entries off by heart. The conversation we’ll have when the moment feels right. The apology waiting for the perfect opening. The fitness that starts Monday, then the Monday after. The idea in the drawer that needs just a bit more thinking. None of it refused, all of it postponed, and postponed feels so much wiser than afraid.

That last word is the honest one, and I put myself at the front of the queue. Waiting for perfect conditions is usually fear wearing a sensible jacket. It looks like patience and plans like wisdom, and it quietly buries more dreams than failure ever gets the chance to.

What the mountain teaches

On a big peak you leave for the summit in the dark, in wind you wish were lighter, on a forecast that says maybe. You go because the window is workable and because the mountain doesn’t owe you better. Half the skill of the wild is exactly this, acting on incomplete conditions with full commitment. Wait until you’re certain, and you’ll be certain in the car park.

Training works the same way. The sessions that build us are almost never the ones where we feel ready. Little and often, in bad weather, beats heroic and rare in everything worth attempting. Readiness turns out to be a rumour. Mostly we start, and the readiness catches up en route.

Whoever watches the wind

There’s a line in Ecclesiastes that was written for farmers and lands like it was written for all of us: whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap. Study the sky for long enough and you will always find a reason to leave the seed in the barn. Meanwhile the season moves on, because seasons don’t negotiate.

And I notice God rarely hands out perfect conditions with His callings. Peter didn’t get out of the boat on a calm day. The step of faith is taken in rough water or it isn’t much of a step. None of that makes preparation matter less; the training counts, the kit counts, the homework counts. But there comes a moment when the window opens, imperfect and workable, and everything turns on whether we move.

This week

So, one thing off the not-yet list. Pick the entry you know by heart, the one that flinched as you read this. The conditions this week will be imperfect, which makes them normal. Do it imperfectly, this week, in whatever wind is blowing.

In my next article I’m telling the story of the slowest deal I ever did, and why slow won. And the Sunday after that, a new series begins here: Anchor Points, eight parts on what actually holds us when the weather turns.

Never Give Up.

Bear