Over the weekend, I watched, again, the movie Free Solo, the film documenting free climber Alex Honnold's 2017 climb of Yosemite's El Capitan.  I've written about Honnold in this blog before, of his willingness to climb, unroped, thousands of feet off the ground, his only recourse if he were to fall to do exactly that, to plummet all those thousands of feet back to the ground.  There's no margin for error, absolutely none.
     I've said that I respect Honnold's willingness to do this, his decision to engage in such live and death gambles, and I affirmed that, oddly enough, his choices are reflective of his creation in the image of God.  Although all animal species make, after a fashion, decisions, we human beings can make them in ways that are unique in all creation.  We know that we are making them, and we know that we are the beings who are deciding things.  We are self-aware in ways that our fellow animals are not.
     Like God.  Watching Free Solo is a nerve wracking experience.  While I know that the story has a happy ending (Honnold successfully scales El Capitan without ropes), I still cannot help but be nervous.  After all, he is negotiating extremely difficult moves on a massive and lofty slab of granite with absolutely no room to err.  I know he doesn't fall, but what if he does?
     Honnold's girlfriend, Sanni McCandleness, wonders about him, too.  She wonders about the extent of his willingness to live, she wonders about the intensity of his commitment to the things of this present existence.  For Honnold, however, life is most alive when he is testing its limits.
     If we affirm the fact and presence of an eternity, we might say that there are bigger limits than mortality, that the end of this life is no limit at all.  We may live as we choose in the present, but we must also consider that we will live beyond it.
     It's all up to us.