“In your search of greater meaning in this Sweetgreenified life, you decide to go to the climbing gym.”

I hate climbers.

Bradly Dunn / Unsplash honestly nice pic bro

Imagine doing what you’re told for your entire life. You get decent grades. You go to college. You study computer science, or business, because that’s what’s employable. You nab the right summer internships. You graduate. You clock in at Google or McKinsey or some other exclusive-enough corporate entity that held recruitment sessions on campus that day you nearly had your first existential spiral. 

You move to Williamsburg or Greenpoint because, unlike your less discerning peers who moved to Murray Hill, you like vinyl listening bars and have a New Yorker tote bag. As those early twenties tick by, an emptiness begins to seep into your body. You can’t place it. Why is this happening to you? You did what everyone said to do and more. You should be happy. 

Several omakase first dates later, you start to realize that it’s not your lackluster love life. Actually, it’s your corporate job that might be the problem. Sure, it pays for your $4,500/month one-bedroom and imparts the kind of brand recognition wherein everyone back home has now concluded you’ve “made it”— all without forcing you to develop any real skills, or the necessity of ever sacrificing happy hour in the East Village. But it does plant inside of you a growing void. You can now detect a hollowness with every Slack message sent, a numbness when the direct deposit hits your account every other Friday. 

So, what do you do now? In your search of greater meaning in this Sweetgreenified life, you decide to go to the climbing gym. 

You sign up for the annual $1,450 membership because you’re committed. You acquire a starter bundle of shoes, a harness and chalk for $69.93. Might as well become a member at REI while you’re at it, right? No excuses. This is the new you. 

And at first, the novelty is what excites you. All the new gear, a new lunch hour tradish where you watch YouTube videos about techniques and equipment reviews. The climbing gym becomes a glossy and safe setting just suggestive enough of wild terrain to make your heart pump with vigor again, surrounded as you are now by a new abundance of similarly-valued people. Gradually, that void deep inside seems to shrink.

The holds on the walls at the gym are color-coded by intensity. You work your way up from baby blue to a nice, testosterony red as the months go on. The similarly-valued, questionably employed guys who also keep showing up at 2 PM on Thursdays and Fridays start to notice you, and in time, you all become friends. A groupchat is formed for volleying various climbing videos and unsolicited tips back and forth. You hit the sauna together after your sessions, and you often follow that up with craft beers at the brewery of the month for trivia night. 

You’re blissfully unaware that this is all contrived — that an elaborate scheme of marketers, brand consultants, social media influencers and real estate developers all converged to ensure that you’d end up right where you are now, giving your spare time and money to a big boy playpen. But you probably wouldn’t mind too much if you did know. 

One day you’re at the gym. You crush a new route you’ve never crushed before. You hit send on the self-timed video to the ClimbingGang™ groupchat, inciting the bombardment of all the usual “siiiiick,” “yooo nice!” and “aye” replies. But wait. Something’s off. You don’t feel that same manufactured sense of achievement you used to. You feel something else instead — the void, it’s back. This can’t be, you think, as the familiar emptiness creeps back up. 

You decide to fight it the only way you know. You climb even harder. You climb daily. You upgrade to the premium membership. You cop the most expensive, top-of-the line gear from REI (thank god you got that membership back then). 

But still, it persists. 

One day — your hands bloodied, your torso dripping in sweat — you stare at your Snow Peak Titanium Aurora Bottle. It’s full of water, but you, on the other hand, feel full of nothing. You now understand that you must ask yourself the real question here. Could there be, all this time, an underlying problem? And could it simply be that it’s time to quit your bullshit job? Is this your moment to look inward for once and think about what you, as a human being, might want to do with your limited time and caloric expenditure on earth? 

You entertain the thought just as much as you want to avoid it. Well, what else is there? DJing might be cool; you always liked managing the Spotify playlist at those college parties. Or, what if you ran your own coffee shop? And oh, dude, what if it was a coffee shop that also played vinyl records? And at night, it turns into a wine bar? 

You suspect that could make you truly happy. But also, you have to get real. This is a capitalist world. Pursuing a “dream”? Think of all the ways it wouldn’t work. All that rejection. All those hours. Now that wouldn’t make you happy, would it? You start thinking faster. Oh yes. You’re really locked in now. Because if anything, that current bullshit job — with all of those meaningless seniority-based promotions, the cushy benefits — that is kind of anti-capitalist, if you think about it. There’s no “grind” or “hustle” or need to put in extra hours on weekends. And so you tell yourself that you’ve had it right all along. This soft pudding of static emptiness is much better than putting yourself through the ups and downs — the searing pains, the dangerous joys — that would come with doing something you think you love. 

So, what do you do now? You hit the pickleball court. —Anne Koda