A Letter from Chris Suarez

FORGET THE VIEW FROM THE TOP

A few weeks back I had the opportunity to do a short hike with a few colleagues - three people I have worked with for years that have become more than co-workers. They have become friends.

We have been through a lot together. Starts. Stops. Launches. Landings. Success. Failure. They’ve seen me at my worst, and well, I hope they haven’t seen me at my best yet. I'm still working towards that.  

But regardless, we set out before sunrise to reach the top of Camelback Mountain. It’s not a terribly difficult climb. It’s about 3,000 feet in elevation over the course of an hour. We were told that the view from the top was just stunning. The sunrise from the top was incredible. It’s worth getting to the top, we were told.

Truth be told, I committed to doing the hike mostly because I aim to do something active every morning. I am preparing for a marathon and thought the cardio of the climb would be good training. To begin with, the goal wasn’t necessarily to make it to the top but rather to move fast enough to get my heart rate up, to get some work done, and to feel like I got some exercise in before the day started. Of course, I’m the type of person that if I start a hike, I aim to finish. If there is a top and view, I aim to get there and to see it.  

But something occurred to me as we started up the side of the mountain fairly quickly. The landscape was beautiful. The rocks were amazing. The cacti seemed to just spring up out of nowhere. As the sun slowly came up, the rocks seemed to change in color dramatically seemingly from one minute to the next. I was stopping more often than I thought I would - not to catch my breath, but to take in the views.

I realized quickly that the hike was no different than the businesses we are all building. It was no different than the business I had been building for the last decade with the friends I was hiking with. We can get trapped into thinking we are working and building to get to the top. To achieve a goal which will be the peak or pinnacle of our career. And in all of our pursuit of that goal, or our focus in getting to the top, we miss the incredible journey along the way. 

We miss valuable parts of our life, or meaningful pieces of relationships. We miss lessons that we were meant to learn along the way. We miss the opportunity to see and really understand the changes we’ve made. Or we miss the moments where we could have made changes in ourselves and changes in directions that we ultimately missed out on.  

Worse, we may be so set on getting to the peak, that anything but a view from the top just doesn’t look as good or feel as good.  

If we are just waiting for the view from the top, we will miss a life full of views along the journey. There is always something to enjoy about the journey. There is always something to take away from the journey. There is always fun to be had on the journey. And there are always people to partner with on the journey that make it that much better.

Regardless of where you are and what your view might be today, take a moment to look around and find something that makes you appreciate your journey. Learn to pause amidst the running and hiking and climbing. Look to the left, look to the right, look behind you. Don’t miss what you were meant to see right where you are today. Don’t miss the people you are with and the people that you were meant to be experiencing today with.

Funny enough, upon returning home and looking at the photos I took of the hike up Camelback, this story was told in pictures. I had countless photos of the mountain, and the sunrise, and the rocks, and the valley below that I had taken as we hiked up. I had just one photo from the top, a selfie with my friends to commemorate the hike.  

After all, it wasn’t the view from the top that we were after. It was the enjoyment of the journey on our way.

Chris