The Old Man and the Mountain.

There are some truths a teacher can name for you, and some truths you can only arrive at by walking. This is a short story about the second kind.

The Allegory

Many years ago, a young student found himself captivated by his teacher. The teacher was telling a quiet tale of a wise old man who lived atop a remote mountain, surrounded by stillness. The story drew a picture of the old man’s life — rich with experience, marked by both accomplishment and setback, and somehow at peace inside both.

The student was so moved by the tale that he resolved to set out on a journey. His quest: to find this old man, and to learn from him the meaning and purpose of life. The boy’s travels took him to many places, where he met all kinds of people and saw all kinds of ways of living.

Along his odyssey, he endured the pangs of suffering and the depths of despair. He also tasted love, and hope, and the company of others who were trying. He beheld the creation of life and the inevitable passage of it. He embraced the discipline of yoga and the joy of dance. He immersed himself in waters and ventured forth on countless walks. He possessed wealth, only to give it away. He knew the catharsis of tears and the ecstasy of laughter. He learned the solace of silence and the loneliness of solitude. He learned to inflict pain, and to feel the sting of his own. And then, after many years, he found himself standing at the threshold of the one place he had yet to explore.

This mountain — lofty, majestic — demanded caution and calculated steps. Treacherous rocks lay along the path. He paused often on the precipices, meditating on his ascent. Finally, he arrived at the summit, where he was greeted by a pristine pool of fresh water — and where he stood alone.

Thirsty from the climb, he stooped to drink. The water was rejuvenating, nourishing. And in that solitary moment, looking down into the pool, it dawned on him.

He bore the scars of his struggles. His face bore the weight of time’s passage. And yet every experience that had graced his life had given him precisely the wisdom he had been seeking. The tranquility that had beckoned him from the mountain’s summit was now his to savor — because he had finally become the kind of person who could savor it.

In the quiet of that mountaintop, in the still water at the top of the long climb, he found what he had been searching for all along.

He was the wise old man on the mountain.

The Reflection

When the story ends this way — when the seeker turns out to be the sought, when the destination turns out to be the climb — the easy reading is that the journey was wasted. That if only the boy had known, he could have stayed home and saved himself the trouble. That if only the wisdom had been delivered straight from the teacher’s mouth, the mountain would never have been necessary at all.

That reading misses the entire point. The wisdom was not on the mountain. The wisdom was in the walking.

There is a kind of knowing that can be transmitted — the multiplication table, the date of an election, the height of a peak. We move that kind of knowing from one mind to another all the time. And there is another kind of knowing that cannot be transmitted under any circumstances — knowing what it costs to lose someone you love; knowing what it feels like to give away more than you can spare and find yourself lighter for it; knowing the difference between solitude and loneliness; knowing the sound of your own voice when no one else is listening. That kind of knowing is reserved for those who have walked.

The student did not climb the mountain so he could find the old man. The student climbed the mountain so that he could become him.

This is the quiet teaching of every wisdom tradition I have read. The Stoics put it one way: what stands in the way becomes the way. The Zen tradition puts it another: before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. The difference is not in what you do. The difference is in who is doing it.

The young student is given no shortcut, because there is no shortcut to give. The teacher cannot hand the student his wisdom for the same reason a swimming coach cannot hand a child the ability to swim. The instruction can be perfect; the lesson is still in the water.

There is a freedom in seeing this clearly. It means none of it was wasted — not the suffering, not the wealth, not the loss of the wealth, not the silence, not the tears. Every chapter of your life that you have wished away, every detour you have called a detour, every season you would rather have skipped — each one was contributing to the only thing you ever actually accumulate, which is the person you have become.

The mountain is at the end of the road. That is the only place the mountain is. But the mountain is also at the end of the only road that gets you there — the long, irreplaceable, walked one.

A question to carry:

What is one experience in your life you have wished you could undo — and what, exactly, would you not now know without it?

— David