How to Get a Leg Up in Life A Tale of Mountains, Cannibalism, and Being an Asshole How do you get a leg up in life? Start by being in a tough place — the toughest of all tough places — and find yourself there with nothing but your best friend. Where is your tough place? Where might you find yourself with your best friend? Even if we don’t have a best friend, we can imagine one. They’d be just like us — laugh at our jokes, play our games, share our dreams. They’d know the best parts of our lives because they’d live them with us. A best friend. We all know what that is, even if we’ve never truly had one — other than ourselves. So, it’s you, your best friend (also you), and the both of you are in a hard place we can all relate to even if we’ve never been there. Why? Because we’ve heard about it, seen it, thought about it. We’re on a mountaintop. The Mountaintop Ah, the mountaintop — a place that commands both wonder and quiet reverence. It rises, unyielding and eternal, a jagged monument to nature’s artistry and fury. The peaks are crowned with untouched snow, glistening like a thousand diamonds scattered across a flawless canvas. The sky stretches endlessly, its blues bleeding into the whites and greys of distant clouds, a masterpiece painted by the hand of time itself. From this vantage, the world below looks small, almost fragile. The valleys are cradled by rolling hills, rivers winding through like veins of silver, and forests spreading like soft whispers across the land. Every step upward, every gasp of thin, frigid air, feels like a triumph over the impossible. How do you get a leg up in life? Start by being in a tough place — the toughest of all tough places — and find yourself there with nothing but your best friend. Where is your tough place? Where might you find yourself with your best friend? Even if we don’t have a best friend, we can imagine one. They’d be just like us — laugh at our jokes, play our games, share our dreams. They’d know the best parts of our lives because they’d live them with us. A best friend. We all know what that is, even if we’ve never truly had one — other than ourselves. So, it’s you, your best friend (also you), and the both of you are in a hard place we can all relate to even if we’ve never been there. Why? Because we’ve heard about it, seen it, thought about it. We’re on a mountaintop.
