Our downstairs neighbors have a pet cat that seems to be engaged in a mostly futile attempt to bring home the neighborhood pigeons for dinner. The pigeons fly higher and the cat is left perched on our porch, or sometimes even on the porch above us, trying to figure out how to get back down. That is usually when a small rescue mission begins.
After this happened a number of times, I started to wonder why we talk so much about climbing, but so little about coming back down? We praise ascent and romanticize growth, yet the real challenge may not be the climb itself. The real problem may be getting stuck, like that cat, scrambling upward with intensity and then realizing there is no graceful way back down.
David HaMelech writes in Tehillim1, מי־יעלה בהר ה׳ ומי יקום במקום קדשו, “Who will ascend the mountain of Hashem, and who will stand in His holy place?” The Shem MiShmuel2, citing the Maggid of Kozhnitz, explains that while ascending the mountain of Hashem may seem like the achievement, the …
