Towards the end of 2019, the world was changed forever. Adults from all walks of life were transported back to their childhood in an instant. Children across the world gained access to a wealth of knowledge never before seen on this planet. On November 12th, the streaming service, Disney+, launched. Like millions of others, I downloaded the app almost immediately and began scrolling through the streaming library. Thousands of memories just there, right at my fingertips. Of course, I spent plenty of time binge-watching all my childhood movies, but eventually I had to move on to the newer content on the platform. As fate would have it, one chilly night in December, my parents and I decided to watch Free Solo.
For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure (the displeasure?) of viewing this documentary, it will leave you speechless. The short synopsis is that this guy climbs a rock. The problem is that this rock is a three thousand, six hundred foot tall granite cliff-face, and Alex Honnold conquers it alone. No other people. No harnesses or rope. Just the raw strength of his hands.
While we may enjoy the end product and we can—and should—marvel at the fact that this man completed this task alone, I will venture to say that he was not entirely alone. The film is titled, “Free Solo,” named after the act for which Alex Honnold has become famous, so of course, we focus on the individual finale. We tend to view the end product and the process that gets us there. We stare at the light at the end of the tunnel, ignoring the path under our feet. Psalm 119:105 says in the New International Version, “Your Word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.” In this verse, David is imploring us to focus on the here and now, the present, the next step we can take. He asks us to focus on the process, not the destination.
Within that process, we need collaboration. Even though Alex Honnold eventually did free solo El Capitan, the process which got him there was by no means a lonely one. Before he ever attempts the climb alone, he practices and rehearses the climb dozens, maybe even hundreds, of times in collaboration with other trusted, experienced climbers. And during these climbs, he uses all of the resources available to him: rope, harnesses, hooks, chalk. Even a man who is known around the world for the things he accomplishes in his own strength relies heavily on those around him to get ready for when the training wheels come off and he stands at the base of an impossible task alone.
And here we stand. At Taylor University. Whether that be as current students, prospective students, faculty, staff, alumni, we stand at the foot of a some difficult task. A vocational conversation, a job or internship search, a major step in a relationship, a huge financial decision, the crossing of some metaphorical valley, the free soloing of some metaphorical El Capitan. Regardless of the seeming difficulty or impossibility of what we are facing, we face it together. We come together in conversation, in community. We allow others into our creative process with the confidence that contested knowledge is better than untried intelligence. We believe in the principle that the sum of ideas is greater than the value of any singular one. That a cord of three strands is not easily broken.
Stay golden,
Noah Huseman
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