Power of Words

Words have so much meaning in our society, but this fact is often overlooked. The way one person might look at a sequence of words could be completely different from the way someone else might look at it. The words could contain an entirely different message. The steeper the mountain, the harder the climb, the better the view at the finishing line. This idiom packs a punch to say the least. The saying can be applicable to so many aspects of life. It’s the fact that it has so much meaning that makes it so powerful. I’ve always believed that there’s only a few things that are more amazing than a group of words together that people from completely different make ups and backgrounds can take, and be influenced and motivated by them all together.

I’d been hearing this saying since I was about thirteen, but never really understood it’s full context until I was a little older. Playing sports and training for sports can be trying. With the long days of weight lifting and conditioning, sometimes one can feel like there’s no end in sight. Like your always going to be doing the same routine and that the point of it is to just see you suffer. I used to have so much anger and hatred built up inside over coaches having unfairly long practice or working us too hard. When I was thirteen, my friends and I played on a traveling basketball team. We had one coach who would come on occasion, but when he did make it to practice, we knew it was going to be no picnic. When he was in the gym, we weren’t even aloud to shoot. It was all conditioning and discipline. We, and a few others, had the same experience our freshman year of high school. We all played football and had no idea what we would have to go through. Two full weeks of two-a-day practices. Each practice four hours in duration, and each one more difficult than the last. If someone missed a call, or an assignment, it was over for us. We were chastised day in and day out. We would do the same thing every year, except, each year we would prepare for tougher competition and each year there would be less people from our original freshman class. Some didn’t think it was worth all the time, and some just couldn’t handle the workouts. It wasn’t until we all gathered when we came back home from college on break that I realized how valuable that time was. We would sit and reminisce about all the times we got yelled at, all the running we did, and all the snaps of the actual games. We had reached the peak in my mind. Our teams never won any championships or league titles so during high school there was no indicator that our destination was achieved. Now we see it. Even those who didn’t make it all four years, we still have that bond as a result of our hard work.

That is the essence of the point this saying, the steeper the mountain, the harder the climb, the better the view at the finishing line, is trying to get across. The difficulty is what makes everything worthwhile. The steeper the mountain, signifying the more adversity you face. The harder the climb, saying the more effort it takes to finish. And the better the view shows how you can stand on top of the mountain at the end and truly be proud of the accomplishments you’ve achieved. These types of situations set people apart and those memories will follow throughout life. I would hear my coaches repeat this saying over and over and I knew that is part of the reason that I made it through all the hardships. My teammates and I knew that eventually we would be on top of that mountain, we just didn’t know when.

It’s spectacular what words can do. When you’re on the field and gasping for air, you think of these words and they give you inspiration. You give each play everything you have even when there’s nothing left. This shows the magic of words and language have and how the words can be taken and internalized into each individual and produce the one thing that can’t be measured by any test or physical assessment, heart.