Everyone needs to find their own way in life
A little over three years ago, I was in Las Vegas for a work conference, during which time I opted to take a couple extra days to rent a car and drive up to Southern Utah for some hiking.
The destination was Zion National Park, where I’d never been. From each person who had, and whom I had told of my plans, the response was nearly universal: “Oh my God, you have to do the Angels Landing hike! It is absolutely epic and no trip to Zion is complete without it!”
Not wanting to pass up an experience that earned such high acclaim from so many, I did some research on it. It did indeed appear to be epic: The summit of the journey is an overlook offering breathtaking views of Zion Canyon and the surrounding salmon-colored canyon walls. And the difficulty level was about what I was looking for, given my limited time: 4.4 miles and a little over 1,600 feet of elevation gain. Not bad at all for a quick day hike.
But there was an enormous catch: The upper reaches of the trail feature extremely narrow sections with sheer drop-offs of hundreds of feet on either side, where the only thing to hold onto is a single chain threaded through posts anchored (hopefully solidly) into the rock. It basically involves scaling the spine of an enormous rock wall that rises vertically from the canyon floor (and drops precipitously into it, if you were to fall). I watched several YouTube recordings of the hike, and my palms got sweaty even as I sat safely on my couch behind my computer screen.
As it happens, I’m not afraid of heights per se—but I am absolutely petrified of exposed high places. I nearly soiled myself when I went zip lining one time in Costa Rica, because on a zip line, there is nothing but open air beneath you. I also have a really hard time hiking along the edge of a cliff. Needless to say, having sheer cliffs on both sides of me, as is part and parcel of Angels Landing, was an unfortunate deal-breaker. I lived in the Pacific Northwest for nearly a decade and developed a love for hiking in the mountains during that time, but never did I put myself in a place where I would have been physiologically paralyzed with fear without any easy escape, and I wasn’t about to do it now.
It did leave me deeply disheartened, though; I was gripped with an unescapable sense that I would somehow be missing the best of this incredibly beautiful place if I didn’t do the trek that so many had urged me to do.
Deep down, though, I knew it simply wasn’t right for me.
So I started researching other hikes in Zion that might offer at least some semblance of the same sort of adventure, and I came across one that captured my attention: Observation Point, situated slightly to the northeast of Angels Landing.
Observation Point, without a doubt, is a more physically demanding hike than Angels Landing: Roughly 2.5 miles longer, it also gains over a thousand feet more in elevation. But what it readily offers to those seeking a good workout, it might lack for those hoping for an adrenaline-inducing thrill.
I was absolutely fine with that—and truth be told, even Observation Point wasn’t without its nerve-wracking moments for me. But at least on this trail, I could hug the wall of the cliff on one side of me instead of being entirely exposed on a narrow trail with a total drop-off on both sides.
So I went with it, starting down on the canyon floor and taking the trail all the way up.
And it was absolutely fantastic — one of the best hikes I’ve ever done. And when I reached the top, it became clear to me why this was the experience I was destined for all along, and why I missed nothing by skipping the more popular option.
Being that Observation Point is a bit to the north of Angels Landing, it offers an even more sweeping view of the canyon. And being that it’s higher up, you get to literally look down on Angels Landing when you’re there, making it an integral part of the topography—and the view—that I would have missed entirely if I hadn’t followed my own intuition and had instead just done what so many others were telling me I should do.
…When I reached the top, it became clear to me why this was the experience I was destined for all along, and why I missed nothing by skipping the more popular option.
Moral of the story: As you work your way through life, the world will incessantly drop subtle hints that what you’re doing, or what you’ve done, or what you aspire to (or don’t), or who you are isn’t good enough. That you’re somehow missing out on something essential because you haven’t chosen or achieved what so many others have — because you’ve somehow diverged from the standard “path” of life and its common milestones. Or because you don’t always ascribe to, value, or believe in the things that are trumpeted as preferred or coveted statuses in society and popular culture.
This is especially true in the age of social media and constant virtual connectivity, where you can always bear witness to someone else’s carefully choreographed snapshots of their life and thus feel deeply inferior and desolate in your own. You’re obviously missing out on something critical right now and will thus die with a profound sense of regret, right?
But this reality is hardly unique to the era of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, et al. The expression “keeping up with the Joneses” long precedes any of those platforms or even the advent of the internet. Human beings are inherently social creatures and thus, since the beginning of time, there’s been a natural inclination to believe that we must emulate others and follow in the footsteps of whoever and whatever we observe in order to find true happiness and fulfillment; that it’s not possible to find those very things within ourselves.
It’s all hogwash. Complete nonsense.
To go back to my metaphor: For many people, I’m sure the Angels Landing hike would be exactly what they’re looking for and more. By all accounts, it’s a thrilling and gorgeous hike, and if it appeals to you, more power to you. And don’t get me wrong — I’m absolutely certain that everyone who recommended it to me did so with nothing other than a spirit of good faith and love.
But that’s just it: I never feared that I was missing out on something because of any one person who recommended Angels Landing to me; it was because so many did. It became as though there was a very specific “right” way to do this iconic American national park, and if I didn’t do it that way, I was somehow squandering my visit.
So it can feel with life in general, where there can be monumental pressure to adhere to the path most commonly chosen—whether on questions of relationship status, career choice, finances, the prospect of parenthood, home ownership, faith or religious beliefs, etc.
It became as though there was a very specific “right” way to do this iconic American national park, and if I didn’t do it that way, I was somehow squandering my visit. So it can feel with life in general.
But ultimately, everyone ought to blaze their own trail.
Which leads to another point I want to make on this topic: It’s not lost on me that the many English teachers I had in school would have said that my headline on this post is grammatically incorrect: “Everyone” is a singular pronoun and “their” is (at least traditionally) a plural one, they would have noted, so the two can’t go together.
Those teachers would have said that the grammatically correct way to write the headline would be: Everyone needs to find his or her own way in life.
I’m generally a stickler for proper grammar, spelling, and syntax—please call me out whenever I fail on any of those fronts—but this is an archaic rule with which I’m happy to dispense. Not everyone is gender-conforming, despite the overwhelming pressure that may exist in some regressive corners of society for them to be, and how dare we restrict our modern written and spoken language to exclude those who are not? Everyone can and indeed should find their own way in life.
Incidentally, I just discovered that the trail I took to Observation Point is now closed, probably for many years, because of a massive rockfall that apparently took place in 2019. Which paradoxically brings up one final point to what I’m thinking here: Not only are we each meant to make our own way in life, but we’re meant to do so right now, at this very particular moment and no other in the scope of eternity.
I hiked to Observation Point in 2018. The rockfall evidently happened a year later. If I had been agonizing over what I was potentially missing out on during my visit to Zion even just a dozen or so months later, I could have missed altogether the chance to experience the incredible beauty I did, regardless of what decision I might have made.
Lots of people urged me to follow the popular trail to Angels Landing. Instead, I followed my own heart and intuition and ended up in a place whose majesty and splendor was even greater than what I would have found if I had simply listened to the crowd and gone down a path with which I wasn’t comfortable.
I’d like to think this is a useful analogy—and lesson—for life as a whole, brought to me by one of the greatest teachers there is: Mother Nature.
