It鈥檚 coming: the holiday gatherings with your extended family members who don鈥檛 exactly share the same views as you when it comes to outdoor recreation.
That鈥檚 right. You know the feeling. You鈥檙e helping yourself to some seven-layer salad, and your Uncle Gary saunters up next to you. You鈥檙e either going to dance around the elephant in the room, or one of you is going to address it. Either way, you鈥檙e filling your plate with those pickle things your mom makes every year, and you鈥檙e also filling your body with cortisol as you and Uncle Gary tiptoe around the subject.
It鈥檚 almost easier if one of you just brings it up. If, say, Gary just lobs it out there like he has in the past: 鈥淪o, are you planning on going ice climbing in 2018?鈥 he鈥檒l say in that vaguely mocking tone, trying to get a rise out of you. You can take one of two routes: You can meet his aggression with aggression, or try to meet it with compassion and have an actual conversation about a subject you may never agree on.
Route 1: Compassion
You know, Gary, I know you disagree with my ice climbing, but I think it might be because you don鈥檛 understand it. You and I just think differently. You think people should do fun things in their spare time, and I want to spend my time鈥攚ell, in pain, and call it fun. I don鈥檛 expect you to understand the joy of having freezing water run into the cuffs of your sleeves, chunks of ice hitting you in the face, swinging sharp tools while in a very tenuous stance, and standing around in freezing temperatures. But I think if you tried it you鈥檇 like it.
Route 2: Aggression
Every fucking holiday dinner, Uncle Gary. You pull this shit. You know what your problem is? You don鈥檛 even pretend to try to understand someone else鈥檚 point of view. Maybe if you ever left your insulated little community where everyone agrees with you, and actually tried to seek out some other points of view, you鈥檇 have a shred of empathy and could actually wrap your head around why someone with no other major issues would want to spend a day hacking at a frozen waterfall until their hands feel like they鈥檙e both on fire and exploding.
Social media has enabled us to create our own online communities where we communicate only with people who agree with us, and although dozens of otherwise perfectly normal people (maybe even hundreds) seem to 鈥渆njoy鈥 ice climbing, not everyone in America does. Nor do they understand what it is. There鈥檚 a distinct possibility that because of the way her Facebook feed populates, your Aunt Marjorie might not even believe in ice climbing. It is, you might admit, kind of ridiculous. And as we all know nowadays, just because some website wrote an article about something, that doesn鈥檛 mean it鈥檚 true.
Sure, you can pull out your phone while you鈥檙e pouring eggnog for everyone, in hopes that showing everyone a few Instagram photos of ice climbers might convince them, but in an age of misinformation, they may have a hard time believing you鈥攑hotos can be faked, after all. It is fairly incredulous, you might admit if you took a step back. Really, to the unenlightened observer, it doesn鈥檛 make a lot of sense that someone would traipse into the woods to chop and kick at a fragile thing like ice as a means to ascend higher and higher off the ground. I mean, it鈥檚 a great way to punch a hole in a pair of $350 pants, but why would you spend all that time, money, and effort, when you could just do something fun, like skiing, or building a snow fort, or day drinking?
If you鈥檙e going to talk about it, maybe think of a very calm, non-judgmental way to explain what ice climbing is, and why you do it. Sometimes people fear what they don鈥檛 understand, and it鈥檚 not super easy to understand climbing ice, isn鈥檛 it?
Plus, is it your job to sit down at Christmas dinner and convince every single member of your family that ice climbing is a sane, maybe even fun activity, and they should all do it, just like you do? Good luck with that one. Maybe consider shutting your fat mouth and passing the peas instead, so your dear grandmother doesn鈥檛 get another ulcer, like she did two years ago. You remember.
You鈥檙e going to go ice climbing whether or not your Uncle Gary approves of it, so maybe you could just change the subject and talk to him about football, or the weather, or his new table saw. In the end, you have to decide what鈥檚 more important to you: pushing your ice climbing/masochistic agenda on the entire family, or choosing to be a little less selfish in the name of making good holiday memories. We don鈥檛 get together that often anymore, and we don鈥檛 know how long everyone is going to be with us. Maybe we could just have a nice time this year.