My motivation scales with trail difficulty. The White Mountains in New Hampshire, objectively more difficult than anything thus far, are easy to get hyped for. The Whites are wet, boulder-strewn, rising and descending at gradients that make the Manitou incline say “yikes.” But it feels somehow easier to cover the same distance here than over flat terrain in New Jersey or south Virginia. The mountains make meaning of the journey. The burn of a hard day, the high, the reward, the challenge. Otherwise it’s simple locomotion (plus some worthwhile learning), which gets old.
The grind of the most difficult obstacles gives me the most satisfaction. Surely some others relate, but based on my conversations with other thru-hikers, it seems most others find meaning in sheer coverage of the trail distance and complain incessantly about obstacles. Achieving a goal does little for me to fill a void of meaning, I realized. Doing something that asks a lot of me is itself the reward, the source from which I draw my motivation.
In my upcoming career, I think the daily grind of moving toward goals will not drive me. I wish this were more motivating. Instead, the effort to accomplish something outside my comfort zone will provide me with the necessary sense of purpose. Will I find that in the world of jobs oriented toward incremental progress? It will take effort, but awareness is the root from which improvement grows.
