Jaded with climbing and stuck in a rut, Kieran Cunningham goes back to the roots of the words we use to describe our strange sport, rekindling his passion and achieving surprising results by coming to realise that suffering and failure are integral to the process, and happiness only ever fleeting... 

We're perched on a grassy escarpment at the base of Tunnel Wall, the Buchaille Etive Mor's only sport-climbing crag and among the finest in Scotland, if not the British Isles. Above us, our draws tinkle in the wind against the sheer rhyolite face on two of the crag's epic, 30-metre routes, Fated Path (7c+) and Railway Children (7c). Twenty minutes ago, I'd strolled through the three acknowledged cruxes of the latter, only to tank once I'd reached the nominal victory jugs at the top.

"You okay?" April asks, heeding my huff.

April had ticked the crag in its entirety — along with most others in Scotland — before a 14-year break during which she devoted herself to childrearing and other challenges. Now, aged 55, she's aiming to do it all again. My sport climbing résumé is less comprehensive, but after a lengthy alpine and trad career in the Italian and Swiss Alps, bolt clipping has become my drug of choice, and in the past three years I've somehow gone from conscientious objector and off-season dabbler to unlikely achiever of a solitary but dearly cherished 8a.

"I don't know how much longer I can do it," I say, emerging from the stupor of anger and disappointment in which I'd been marinating since April caught my latest fall.

Every project I've had in the past year has been the same — reaching the last few moves on the early burns only to then spend multiple sessions falling with the chains, sometimes literally, within my grasp. That day wasn't the first time I'd strolled the three cruxes of Railway Children only to power out once reaching easier ground. I'd done the same thing twice yesterday, and twice again the week before.

Each failure had inflicted a keen psychological blow, to the point where it felt like I'd signed myself up for a mental breakdown on the instalment plan. Climbing was my life. Each of us have an innate identity that defines us in one way or another, and I identified as a climber. Every detail of my life was managed and orchestrated to support and accommodate climbing. My inability to clamber up those last few feet of fairly easy ground, consequently, seemed to pose a threat to my very being, not merely because I couldn't do it but because I'd now reached a stage where the mere thought of repeating 30+ metres of some of the best climbing in the country filled me with fear and dread rather than relish.

Tomorrow we'd return south to our homes in Edinburgh and Fife — another week of distraction and sleepless nights, dreaming of how to negotiate the superficial intricacies of a lump of rock in a bunch of remote, often wet and midge-infested hills more than three hours' driving and a 45-minute hike away. April, I knew, would busy herself with family life, her failure to send mitigated by the knowledge that she'd done it all before. I'd spend the week nursing wounds, leaning on my girlfriend's words of consolation, and oscillating between attempting to resurrect the necessary psyche to do it all again and wondering if it was worth it, whether there was even any point in trying.

In my trad and mountaineering years, my days in the mountains had brought me happiness, serving as a comprehensive curative for the trials and troubles of the working week. As my venture into the world of sport climbing and projecting progressed, however, happiness had come to comprise a vanishingly smaller part of my experience, and the working week had now become the curative and consolation for the heartaches I endured on the weekends.

I didn't know how much longer I could do it.

Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher

Climbing is, of course, a sport that is apt to elicit an inordinate number of neurotic and nutty behaviours in its participants. If you've been doing it for any length of time, the chances are you know a few of the following: those who neglect other life responsibilities in favour of time on rock; those who lose the rag when things aren't going their way at the crag; those who starve themselves or train their bodies to breaking point in pursuit of "marginal gains"; those who lie awake at night visualising moves, tweaking beta, or battling bouts of performance anxiety.

This, and several other deviancies, make it unique among pastimes. Few golfers or gamers, for example, are likely to trade brick-and-mortar dwellings for grungy vans to pursue their passion more thoroughly; fewer yoga or pilates enthusiasts are known to drag themselves and their families across the country or to other countries entirely — either on vacation or permanently — just to enjoy better milieus in which to indulge their ambitions; soccer and ping-pong players are unlikely to view bankruptcy as a more favourable alternative to any downturn in performance.

Should you know people to whom the above apply, it's likely none of them have risen to the level required to make any kind of living from their undertakings. A few of the behaviours probably also apply to you, whatever stage of your climbing career you happen to be at. In my case, I had in the past ended relationships, quit jobs, got fired, and moved country to better indulge my climbing habit. Now, I was neglecting my work, girlfriend, and duties as carer to two elderly, sick parents, and further destabilizing my historically precarious mental state in a bid to achieve something that a) could be achieved in less time by any kid in my gym in circa 6 months of climbing b) would be remembered or acclaimed by precisely no one c) would bring me less lasting enjoyment than a decent cheesecake.

In the weeks that followed that latest redpoint letdown, I took time off to massage my ego, do some soul searching, and sleep off my evident burnout. In the abundance of time vacated by planning, doing, and recovering from time on rock, I discovered that much of the aforementioned nutty behaviour is a case of developing and maintaining selective blind spots that allow us to indulge our folly free of the potentially unfavourable discoveries and judgements that might come from any self-examination. These blind spots are easy to maintain when so caught up in the flow of nuttiness that there's no time to stop and allow common sense to prevail. Now, with several unfilled hours at my disposal daily, I found myself questioning my obsession with climbing and struggling to justify it, excuse it, or square it with the fact of living in a world already riddled with enough very real problems without adding the ones we contrive in the name of recreation.

On April's recommendation, I tried to reignite my love of climbing by doing other things, hoping that distance does indeed make the heart grow fonder.

I sought distraction and diversion, doing some of those things that non-climbing Muggles do that I'd always scorned or been too busy climbing to care for — long showers, long walks with the dog, naps, meeting up with non-climber friends, shopping, coffee, more walks. When I'd tired of these, I found myself seeking solace and succour in the arms of previous loves, namely linguistics and the philosophy of language, in which I'd done a doctorate in my twenties. It was here that I unexpectedly found the means by which I'd heave myself out of my funk when taking an unplanned detour into the etymologies of a few of the words most pertinent to the climbing experience. By exploring these — and adding a dash of gentle casuistry to the equation — I soon came to a better understanding of how I might preclude the burnout and angst I felt that day at Tunnel Wall and avoid further visits to similar doldrums in future.

I started with "professionals", the term employed in referring to that blessed class of climber who can be simply defined as those who receive some form of remuneration for doing what they do. When the going gets tough for these gals and guys, downing tools and wallowing in a funk is not an option. They have an added incentive — sustenance — to justify any excessive and obsessive behaviour. This distinction would appear to give the pros a pass that's unavailable to the rest of us, but the origin of the term "professional" suggests otherwise. "Professional" derives from the Latin profitēri, meaning "to avow" or "profess" in the sense of swearing an oath, which in more idiomatic parlance essentially means to be all-in, to commit to something with unswerving dedication. With climbing, this could equally apply to the few million of us not so lucky to merit emolument for our upward crawling, as, unlike in other sports, not many allow our lowly standing as mere "punters" dissuade us from following a training regimen and lifestyle similar to members of the elite. This interpretation of the word "pro" seems to excuse the rest of us for taking things too seriously, even making our efforts and application laudable given that we can expect no reward for them other than a few hypothetical stripes and the experience itself.

Those of us who do not fall into that exalted category fall into the taxonomy of "punter", or more kindly, "amateur".

The term "amateur" derives from the Latin amator, meaning "lover". The simplistic take-home here would be to view this as proscriptive — "Must. Love. Climbing." — but a simple acceptance of what the descriptive reading entails is more fruitful. All who have loved, alas, know that loving isn't always lovely. That woe, worry, and heartache are as frequent features as any more salubrious or positive feeling or emotion.

We also know that love is often not a logical thing, but something immune to reason and rational thinking, and that many of us unwittingly love despite, or even because the object of that love enriches our lives with intrigue, drama, and a per contra for the dullness of everyday life. In this sense, romantic love differs little from the love of the amateur climber for climbing.

Loving something is the hardest thing you'll ever do, if you do it right. Whether that thing is a human or a habit, embracing all of love's many faces is both the cost of enjoying the good parts and a prerequisite to forming a relationship of any depth. Your love is not chosen, nor is it a reliable conduit to happiness. Expecting anything else oils a steep downhill path to disappointment, frustration, and discontent.

The most common response given by climbers when their devotion to the sport is questioned is "fun". But fun wasn't always fun. In 15^th-century English, describing something as such was to label it foolish or silly. Contrasting this with the seriousness with which many of us approach our days on plastic or rock breathes some air into what can be a deplorably stuffy room, reminding us that our agonies, aspirations, songs and dances are indeed daft — a perspective that can't fail to leaven the psychological load whenever we next approach our putative playgrounds.

Another way some of us explain away our fanaticism is by referring to climbing as a passion. The term itself evokes notions of being in thrall to something in a heady, dotty, infatuated way, which seems to fit the bill. The word's etymology, however, is perhaps more revealing and relatable. "Passion" entered the English language by way of the late Latin passionem, meaning "suffering" or "enduring", as in the "Passion of Christ", which in turn reached us from the Ancient Greek pathos, meaning "suffering, emotion, or calamity". In Middle English, the term took on the meaning of "ailment or affliction", which also rings a bell.

Awareness of our affliction is key to managing and coping with its symptoms. Understanding that our passion (i.e. climbing) is something that is semantically supposed to cause suffering rather than a mere "pastime" (something done purely to pass the time) makes that suffering, somehow, all the more acceptable and manageable.

And what of "happiness", the very thing to which we all aspire in love, work, and home life, and what we expect at the very least from the things we do for play? The word arrived to modern English via the Old Norse happ, meaning "luck" or "chance." The term has held its current meaning of a "state of feeling pleased" for a few centuries now, but its origins may give a more accurate representation of what we might expect of happiness.

Humans aren't designed to be happy — or at least not for long. Evolutionary biology has taught us that our brains are designed to release the "feel-good" hormone dopamine whenever we do anything that might contribute to the survival and proliferation of our genes — when we mate, for example, or enjoy successes, especially those that might raise our profile and earn us respect within our community. The hormone hit, however, is short-lived, and with good reason. Curtailing the pleasurable feeling ensures we seek more of it and so indulge in further similar acts to that end. As with sex and respect-worthy acts, after successful climbs a sprinkling of happy dust is cast upon us from the hypothalamus, then summarily spirited away, leaving us seeking more.

So how does this relate to happ? Well, nobody expects to be lucky 100% of the time, nor should we expect to be happy 100% of the time. If we were, we'd never push the envelope, never raise the bar — something we are genetically programmed to do. Expecting climbing to make us happy is to ignore that climbing is a subset of Life, and the very thing that gives Life its colour is the unfailing rise and fall of fortune. If happiness were all we knew, things would soon get terribly boring, probably to the point where we would actively seek misfortune.

Climbing makes up less than 10% of life for most climbers, so we would do well to re-frame our definitions and instead view this time as the "success", the "lucky" phase of etymological happiness. As for the regard of our peers, they, for the most part, don't give a hoot how we have fun, so should be disregarded from the equation.

Lastly, we have the British term for an amateur or enthusiast climber, "punter".

The word first entered English in the 17^th century via the Spanish punto. In the card game Ombre, a punto is the second lowest value of suit in red trumps (themselves of secondary rank to black "matador" trumps), which seems to establish a basis for eventual definitions of a grouping of secondary standing. From here, it was also a short journey to meaning "to bet against the bank", gamble, or make a risky investment. The term appeared with this definition in Edward Phillips' The New World of Words, or, a General Dictionary in 1706 ("a person who bets or gambles, esp on horses; a gambler"), which aligns with the holder of the punto's poor prospects should they bid against their adversaries with such a weak hand.

In the mid-20th century, the term's colourful history sunk to a new low, with it coming to be used to mean "victim" or "sucker" by the late 1930s, as evidenced in Philip Allingham's book, Cheapjack, about a travelling fortune teller and huckster who made a living making suckers or victims of his audiences. A short while thereafter, "punter" was equally applicable to the clientèle of prostitutes as it was gamblers and audience members, as demonstrated when it made an appearance in Stanley Jackson's 1946 Indiscreet Guide to Soho and a 1970 Sunday Times interview with a London sex worker. It wasn't until the late 20^th century that the current meaning of "general customer" became standard.

Here, we can only be grateful that we are not resigned to being mere members of an audience but are participants — unlike soccer fans, for example. We might also take comfort in knowing that each foray onto the rock is a gamble and a potentially risky investment — if, that is, we expect some return on our investment of time, effort, training, and petrol money. Climbing is, in essence, a game, and the axiom of any game is that the outcome should be unknown.

Were the outcome a foregone conclusion, how many of us would do it? Risk, then, is inevitable, unless we are content to plod along climbing grades well within our limit. As for the patronage of prostitutes, we might find an easing of the desire we have for certain routes and projects by simply acknowledging that our relationships with them are not special or unique, that the rock gives him or herself indiscriminately to all.

Arming myself with this newly made-over lexicon had an immediate effect, inducing a subtle but noticeable recalibration of whatever bits of my brain had been responsible for my recent meltdown and crisis of character. By considering climbing a form of ailment rather than a dead-cert deliverer of happiness, a bestower of all aspects of love rather than only the rosy bits, something silly rather than serious by definition, and a risk that promises no return, I started to pick away at the threads of the net that had ensnared me those past few years. By embracing the terms, warts and all, I was able to take the pressure off and simultaneously commit to climbing — the full experience — more than ever before.

April and I returned to Tunnel Wall with our partner, Roxy, five weeks later. I agreed to go on a belaying detail only in order to enjoy a two-day vacation away from the pressures of home and carer duties. While resting between burns on their projects, April and Roxy convinced me to do a quick "recon" of my route so I'd at least remember some of the moves for future visits. I went bolt-to-bolt, taking an age to reach the top. Every move felt much harder than before, and one in particular had me stumped. Instead of berating myself or lamenting my drop in form, I could now only marvel at how strong I'd been to even reach my previous highpoint. I left the draws in, setting myself a goal of putting three or four moves together on the next burn, which I hoped might provide a platform from which I could build on subsequent visits until I eventually regained enough strength and mettle to consider a redpoint. Before tying in, I pre-emptively apologised to my belayer, Roxy, for how long I would take and requested she rescue my draws if I couldn't reach the top. I set off, expecting an ordeal as I lumbered through the opening moves, but was unaware that my shift in mindset had compensated for what I'd lost in fitness that past month and somehow, 33 metres of uninterrupted struggle and relish later, found myself clipping the chains.

Happ had favoured me. I was an amador momentarily bathed in the more blithesome bits of that demographic's lot and kindly reminded that the suffering of my passionem was a part of the process and — comfortingly, somehow — as wonderfully foolish as it was unavoidable. I was once more a card-carrying profitēri of climbing.