The Climber whose Arm was pinned by the Rock

The Stockdale Paradox. The crucible, the signpost, the guide. How do you hope and yearn to sustain life, just enough to stay alive, without wanting so much that your heart breaks when you hit the rough patches, the shifting crevasses. How can you keep yourself from taking your heart and putting it somewhere safe, in a jewelry boxed tight, in the gauzy future, wishing and hoping and praying that the sadness will end? How to take the localized hope that you'll realize your goal, and pull it so wide across the rest of time that you can hope beyond the dashing of your hope? How do you do that without ripping it, and tearing at yourself in the process?

How can you possibly have enough strength to hold onto your faith in the face of evidence that your faith is meaningless and always was? A dull and terrifying void. How do you hate just enough to stay alive, but love just enough to be human in the end? How to walk the edge of the razor without becoming one; to burn off your loss without burning off your soul in the process? When they take away even the idea of completion, commencement, the lie of meaning, the black stone and the white; when you're looking at the negative space where the future used to be, how do you remember how to stay alive? What do you do when you can't get out? You climb.