Overtaken on the way up

The trail above the dam at Hatta is steep in its first kilometre, and most people who walk it get overtaken.

A group comes past in proper boots and light packs, moving at twice the pace, chatting easily while everyone else is breathing hard. For a minute it is difficult not to feel slow, and then a little foolish for coming at all.

That feeling assumes there is a finish line, and somebody keeping a list of who reached it first.

There is not. Nobody is timing the walk. The people in the boots will reach the top sooner, look at the same view and go home. The family behind them will reach it later, look at the same view and go home. Neither of them won anything. They were not competing. They were each out for a walk.

I see the same flinch in people who make things. A woman starts baking from home and watches another home baker, a year ahead of her, grow faster. A man writes every week and sees someone else's letter overtake his within a month. Each takes it as a verdict.

It is only a verdict if you signed up for a race, and most of the time nobody asked you to. The speed of the people passing you tells you something about them. It tells you nothing about whether your own walk is worth taking.

The point was always the walking. Being passed does not change that, unless you let it turn the afternoon into a contest you never entered.