The way down

Nobody trains you for the descent.

Every story we're given about achievement points one direction. Base camp, climb, summit. The photographs are always taken at the top. What happens after the photograph, nobody mentions - as if the mountain ends there, as if the climber dissolves into the view.

But you don't dissolve. You stand there, above everything you worked for, and after the elation burns off - sometimes it takes a week, sometimes a decade - a strange question arrives: now what?

The industry answer is: another mountain. A bigger one. Rebrand the restlessness as ambition and start climbing again. It works, for a while, the way the last climb worked - right up until you notice you're planning summits to avoid standing still.

Here's what I've learned, from my own descents - and there have been a few: the stages, the startups, the exits, the identities that each of those built and then outlived. The summit isn't the end of the story. It's the turning point. And the part that changes you isn't the climb.

It's how you approach the way down.

It can be like starting all over again.

Or it can feel like coming home.

The summit isn't the end of the story. It's the turning point. And the part that changes you isn't the climb.