The obstacle in front of the work is part of the work
💎CORE ARGUMENT
When something blocks the work, I treat it as an interruption: a gap until the real thing can resume. Marcus says the opposite, more or less. Whatever stands in the way of an action becomes the material for the next one.
I did not believe this until my finger made the case.
On 15 March I strained a pulley in my left ring finger on a small yellow crimp. The diagnosis was mild and the instruction was tedious: no crimping for six weeks, then slabs and open hands until August. For a climber whose whole method was to hold on harder, that seemed to rule out climbing.
But a slab cannot be pulled up. It has nothing to hold, so the work goes to the feet: where the weight sits, how slowly it shifts, whether I trust a smear of rubber on a hold the size of a coin. For three years I had got past weak footwork by being strong enough in the fingers to ignore it. The injury removed the workaround. By the time I was discharged in September I was a better climber than in March, and in December I climbed a grade I had never managed with two good hands.
So the obstacle was the missing part of the syllabus, the part I would never have chosen for myself.
I think it generalises because of what an obstacle does. It blocks the route I had been using, and that route is usually the one that suits my strengths. What is left is the route through whatever I had been avoiding.
It breaks down quickly if I am careless with it. A mild strain is a teacher. A rupture would not have been, and I am suspicious of anyone who finds a lesson in every misfortune, since some of them are only losses. It also only worked because someone qualified told me which loads were safe. It agrees with 💎 I can listen to a system but I cannot control it and 💎 Reality has more detail than any plan can hold: I did not plan any of this.
🧱BUILT FROM
🌍WHY IT MATTERS
When something blocks a plan I now ask what it leaves open before I ask how long until it clears. At work the question is the same: the reorganisation took away half my team and left a roadmap problem I would not otherwise have been handed.
Where I saw it: ♦️ Climbing technique · 🏋️ Chalkline Climbing · 📂 Exceptions Inbox general availability
☑️NEXT STEPS
- Keep one slab session a month now that crimps are allowed again
- Ask Ilse what the equivalent weak point is for the shoulder
📖 Marcus Aurelius on what is in my control: I cannot govern what happens, I can govern what I do with it, and an impediment can be turned into the thing to work on.
💎 I can listen to a system but I cannot control it: the finger healed at its own rate and my job was to watch it and respond. 💎 Reality has more detail than any plan can hold: nobody's training plan had learn footwork by injury in it.
An obstacle closes the habitual route, which is usually the one built on existing strengths. The work has to go another way, through the weaker skill that strength had been covering for. The blocked path forces the practice I would not have chosen.
This is survivor's reasoning. I can tell the story because it ended well. The same sentence said to someone with a rupture, or to Mum in the first week after her knee, would be an insult. Sometimes an obstacle is only an obstacle and the right response is to wait.
Kept as a rule in ⚓ The obstacle is part of the work. The dull, dated detail is in 🦾 Finger pulley return protocol. It changed who I think I am on a wall: 🎭 The Careful Climber.