I once overheard two high school students talking on the subway. One said that if exams didn't exist anymore, what they really wanted to do was sit in on university courses—specifically ones with names they couldn't even pronounce, like "Paleobiology and Stratigraphy" or "Comparative Mythology." The other asked, what's the point? The first one thought for a moment and said, no point, really. I just want to know what all those things I don't understand are actually about.
The train pulled into a station, they squeezed through the doors and disappeared into the crowd. I stood there in the swaying carriage, but their words stayed with me: "I just want to know what those things I don't understand are actually about."
That might be the most ancient form of human curiosity. Not for grades, not for certificates, not even for usefulness. Just the simple desire to push open an unknown door and take a peek inside. And after that, to go to the cafeteria and eat a hot meal, letting a stomach full of food accompany a mind full of new thoughts.
I filed that moment away, and over time, I realized it felt more and more like standing at the base of a climbing wall.
Climbing: A Question That Needs No Reason
People who climb often get asked: why do you do it?
It's a difficult question to answer, because none of the usual reasons quite fit.
It's not for winning—most climbers will never stand on a podium. It's not for health—the sport is too easy to get injured in. It's not even for the view—indoor gyms have no view to speak of.
Yet you still go. You stand before a wall, staring at a constellation of colorful holds, trying to decipher a route. Where do my hands go? Where do my feet go? How does my body need to move? These questions consume your entire attention. And when you finally find a sequence that works, when you hang in mid-air and discover that precarious point of balance, a small detonation goes off in your mind: Oh, so that's how it works.
It's the same pleasure as understanding a difficult lecture. It's not conquest. It's comprehension.
The Hangboard: Time Cut Into Its Smallest Units
If climbing is a conversation, then hang board training is the punctuation—tiny, repetitive, yet holding the whole thing together.
It's a simple wooden hangboard mounted on a wall, with edges of varying depths. Your job is to hang on. Hold on for a few seconds, then drop. Rest for a few minutes, then hang again. No movement. No scenery. No opponent. Just you, gravity, and a ticking second hand.
To an outsider, it looks like the most boring activity imaginable. But anyone who climbs knows that this is where the deepest secrets are kept.
You hang from an edge fifteen millimeters deep. The first second is fine. By the third, you're trembling. By the fifth, pain shoots from your fingertips into your brain. By the seventh, you let go and drop. The next day, you do it again. A month later, you're still doing it. But then one day, you're climbing outside, and you pinch a hold so small it's almost invisible—and your body just stops. It holds steady.
In that moment, you understand: things have been growing where you couldn't see them. Tendons getting stronger. Your nervous system learning to fire more efficiently. Capillaries quietly multiplying to supply oxygen to starving tissues. All of it happening beneath the surface, in a dimension you can't directly observe. All you can do is trust time, trust repetition, trust those days that seem to lead nowhere.
It's the same texture as the payoff from sitting through a "useless" course. You don't know what today's lecture is for. You don't know when any of this knowledge will ever matter. But one afternoon, you're walking down the street, watching clouds drift past the rooftops, and something in your brain just clicks. You say, oh, so that's how it works.
That kind of understanding isn't learned. It's grown.
The Steam Rising in the Cafeteria
After the lectures, a hot meal in the cafeteria—that was the detail the high school student mentioned, and the one I've never forgotten.
I know what they meant. It's not really about the food. It's about the warmth. It's about emerging from a purely intellectual space and needing the most mundane kind of heat to pull you back down to earth. It's eating for the sake of this moment, not rushing to the next meeting, not fueling up for more work.
The meal after climbing is exactly the same.
You come out of the gym, completely emptied. Your fingers are still faintly trembling. Your shoulders ache as if someone's been working them over. You sit at a street stall or squeeze into a greasy little restaurant. You order noodles, or a plate of rice with toppings. The steam hits your face, and you eat with total focus.
Only someone who has truly exhausted themselves knows how that meal tastes. It's not the best food you've ever had. But it's the most present you've ever been. You're not thinking about your phone. You're not thinking about tomorrow's report. You're just eating. Just recovering. Just being alive.
Conclusion
Some people want to slowly understand the world in a lecture hall. Others want to slowly fail to understand themselves on a wall. They look like different paths, but both lead deeper—toward the things that only reveal themselves to those who wait.
Take a useless course. Try a route you can't read. Hang from a wooden edge and feel time slip through your fingers. And afterward, eat a meal that's still steaming.
Not for any other reason. Just so that, in that moment, you truly own that moment.