For most of his life, he lived high above the world.
From up there, the air was thin but clear. He could see everything — the villages below, the people laughing and crying, the endless rhythm of living. From a distance, it looked almost beautiful. Almost safe.
He built a home on that mountain. Strong. Tidy. Structured.
Every stone carefully placed.
From his window, he watched the world turn. Nothing could touch him there. No one could reach him.
The climb had been long, but necessary. He went up because the world once hurt too much. Somewhere along the way, the boy inside him made a quiet decision:
I’ll be safe if I’m high enough to see it all coming.
So he learned control.
He measured his days by progress.
His worth by achievement.
His safety by distance.
The mountain gave him something to aim for — and for a long time, that was enough.
But over the years, something hollow began to echo in the silence.
He could see life — but not feel it.
He could plan love — but not receive it.
He was surrounded by a vast stillness he called peace.
Then one day, someone cracked the sky.
Love arrived — not as a plan, but as a storm.
It howled through his walls. It rattled the stones loose. For the first time in years, he didn’t feel safe.
For the first time, he felt alive.
When the storm passed, he looked around and realised something devastating and true:
The mountain wasn’t a sanctuary.
It was a prison — built from fear, structure, and loneliness.
From up there, he had watched decades of his own life pass by below him.
He had been there… but never in it.
So, with shaking legs, he began the long walk down.
Every step hurt.
His body was unused to the gravity of emotion.
His heart was tender from the thaw.
He stumbled on regret.
Slipped on grief.
Sometimes wished he’d stayed up there where it was quiet and controlled.
But something deeper kept pulling him forward — the call of the valley, the pulse of real life.
When he finally reached the bottom, the world was unbearably alive.
He could smell rain.
He could hear laughter and loss.
He could feel the weight of his own tears on his skin.
Everything that had once been distant was now immediate.
And though it ached — it was real.
He stepped barefoot into the soil and felt life press back against him.
And in that moment, he whispered:
“I was there, but I wasn’t.
Now I am.”
The man on the mountain didn’t die.
He descended.
He came home to the valley of the living.
And there — in the tender chaos of it all — he began the rest of his life.
Awake.
Life Coaching Questions
Where in your life are you watching from a distance instead of fully participating?
What structures or “mountains” once kept you safe, but may now be keeping you numb?
If you trusted yourself enough to descend, what part of life would you step back into first?
