How to Get a Leg Up in Life How to Get a Leg Up in Life (Full Circle) It doesn’t matter. The mountain doesn’t care about blame or fairness or morality. It only cares that we came, that we tried, and that we failed. They’ll tell stories about us, the people down below. They’ll say we were brave, that we reached higher than anyone else dared to, that we fought until the end. They’ll call us heroes. And they’ll be wrong. We weren’t brave. We were stupid. We didn’t plan. We didn’t think. We let our pride and our egos drive us to a place we couldn’t survive. And now, we’re paying the price. If you’re reading this, if you’re hearing this, then learn from our mistakes. Think more. Live longer. Don’t climb mountains you’re not ready for, and don’t drag your best friend to the top with you just to die together. Because dying on the summit isn’t glory. It’s failure. And the mountain doesn’t care. How do you get a leg up in life? Start by being in a nice place — the nicest place of all nice places — and find yourself there with nothing but your best friend. Where is your nice 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 is 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.
