There once was a man named Abe whose job it was to roll big stones up a hill. He was pretty good at it, at least until the moment he suddenly wasn't.
That's where his story gets interesting.
You see, all his life, for as long as he could remember, Abe was told how good he was at pushing those boulders, and most everything else he did. Abe learned from a very young age that falling down was a sign of weakness and that he was not weak, so he should never need to fall down.
Once as a kid he saw another boy fall down, and, if you can believe this, the boy wasn't even pushing a rock when he fell. Abe stopped to look, but his teacher shooed him along.
"That kid fell," the teacher said. "But you're not the type of kid who falls down very often. When you grow up and get strong, you will learn never to fall at all." Abe was proud of himself, and happy not to be like the others. Falling down was painful and not very much fun.
As he grew up, Abe became better and better at never losing his balance. The few times he wobbled, his teachers told him that he must not be trying hard enough to stand tall. "You're not the kind of person who falls down unless you are careless. You are not the kind of person who falls down unless you are being lazy. If you only apply yourself, you'll never fall down at all."
Whenever Abe did fall, he always felt like it was his fault for not being more careful or for taking his eyes of the path.
Abe eventually grew up and fell into a job pushing rocks, which he thought he was pretty good at. He rarely fell, even when the climb was steep. Others had similar jobs along side him, and occasionally he would see them slip on the incline. Abe was thankful that wasn't him.
Despite his best efforts, Abe occasionally got overwhelmed and lost his footing on one of the hills. Whenever he did, he would throw himself behind the boulder he was pushing, and jump back up quickly so that nobody could see him on the ground. Abe thought that he was not the kind of person who fell down, after all, and he was afraid people would think less of him if they found out otherwise. Not falling was what Abe thought made him special.
So Abe had made a nice living, gathering modest acclaim as the guy who was one of the steadiest hands in town at pushing rocks up hills. He was unsure of the answers to many of the great questions of life, or to what use all those stones at the top of the hill would eventually be put, but he took comfort in knowing that he could usually get them up the hill seemingly with less effort than some of the other people in town.
Abe was glad not to be one of those people who fell down. They were bruised and dirty and scraped, some of them to the point that it looked like they might never fully heal. Abe was dry and clean, and he liked it that way.
Abe thought he was different.
Until he wasn't.
One day Abe was putting all his effort into hauling a large rock up a mountain. It was a tall mountain, but he had hauled rocks up it three times before, so Abe was sure he could do it again. But this time, as Abe got almost to the top, he lost his footing and rolled all the way down back to where he had started, and the boulder rolled over him a few times for good measure on the way down.
Abe was bruised and bloodied, but his first instinct was to look around and hope no one saw him fall. "This is so embarrassing," he thought. "I'm not the kind of person who falls down." He hoped no one would notice what happened, and sure enough, most people didn't.
Abe was shaken by his failure, but he kept showing up for work, pushing rocks, mostly up smaller hills. But soon Abe starting falling down all the time, and he didn't know why. He tried harder and harder to hide his falls, and his ever-increasing bruises. He tried as best he could to get his rocks up the hill without anyone noticing his newfound struggles, hoping his problems would only be temporary.
One day Abe went to the village to see a doctor to find out why he was falling and put a stop to it quickly. Instead of a solution, however, the doctor had somber news.
"You have a condition," she said, "that will cause you to fall down all the time. There is no way to fix it, and it will only get worse over time."
Abe was heartbroken. He had thought he was the kind of person who didn't fall down, but suddenly he was instead the kind of person who couldn't easily stand up. He had once thought he was good at pushing rocks uphill, but he had failed spectacularly to climb the last mountain he tried. His life suddenly seemed purposeless, and maybe even hopeless.
"I'm not the kind of person who never falls down, anymore." Abe thought. "And I never will be." Abe didn't know who he was anymore.
Abe went back to the hill the next day to push rocks as best he could. He wanted to just give it up, but he didn't know what else to do.
Abe fell down a lot. The first few times his instinct was to hop back on his feet, hide behind his rock and cover it up, but soon Abe realized there wasn't any point because he was going to fall back down again soon anyway. After one big fall, Abe looked around expecting to see people laughing at him, but he was surprised to see that most people were to busy struggling with their own rocks to really notice. And of the people who did notice, most of them shouted words of encouragement his way rather than scorn.
Abe felt a little embarrassed climbing the hill with so many falls, and he sure did pick up some bruises along the climb. But before he knew it, he had reached the top of the hill.
Abe went back down and grabbed another rock, and the process repeated. After he had pushed a few stones to the hilltop he looked over and saw some of the old stones that he had pushed up years earlier. Abe suddenly realized that his new rocks, the ones on which he had fallen a few times while pushing uphill, were just as high as the old ones that he pushed up easily long before.
"I guess it didn't really matter how many times I fell," Abe realized. "It only mattered where the rocks ended up."
Abe started falling more and more often, but wanted to prove he could still do his job, in part because he had gone to one of the best rock climbing schools and didn't have many other skills. But the memory of that giant mountain where he had crashed and burned once before haunted him. He knew he needed to push a rock up it just one time to prove to himself that he still could, and so that he wouldn't have to settle for shallow challenges from that point on.
He also knew that he was going to fall many times along the way, but he promised himself he would get up and keep inching forward as best he could.
Abe started up the hill in the dead of night because he was still afraid that people would laugh at him if they saw him fail. Abe fell constantly, more often than he ever had before. Some days he didn't even have the strength to get up immediately and had to lie there a while, holding the rock in place, until he could push again. But every time he fell, he told himself to get up again, because the joy of making it to the top--of proving that he still had something to contribute--would be worth the fight.
The climb seemed to take forever, and it only got steeper as Abe continued. Abe had grown weak and weary from the climb, so he used every bit of strength he could muster to give the stone one final shove. He pushed it and fell forward before he collapsed, thinking he had given it all he had but again fallen short.
Abe woke the next morning to a beautiful view of the valley floor beneath him. He had been to hills like this three times before, but never really stopped to look, so he was stunned and awe-struck when he stopped to appreciate the view. Abe smiled at the view, but he was ragged and ready to get back home, having given it his best shot but having again failed. He was disoriented from the climb, so he took a moment to gather himself, find his boulder and figure out which way led him back down.
But in that moment Abe realized that every path in sight led down the mountain, because he already had made it to the top, with his rock right beside him, sitting just a little bit higher than the three he had pushed up the mountain years before.
He made it to the summit even while falling down along the climb. He made it to the top, even while dirty and bruised. He made it to the end of the journey. And that's all that mattered.
Abe looked into the valley, and into the sky, and at his bruised and battered body, which might always bear scars reminding him of what he had just overcome. As he looked down on the hills he had climbed, Abe suddenly knew exactly who he was.
"I'm the kind of person that falls down sometimes," he realized. "And I'm the kind of person who gets back up again when I do.
"I'm the kind of person for whom things don't always come easily, and I have to work harder than I used to in order to get them.
"I'm the kind of person who got this boulder higher up the mountain than I could before, because this time I wasn't afraid of falling down.
"I'm the kind of person willing to fight through the pain and the failures for something that really matters.
"And that's so much more interesting and joyous kind of a person than the kind who never falls down."
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