When you are truly engaged with the world, you are only dimly aware of yourself. I feel this most acutely when I climb mountains, cliffs, and desert towers. On the high crag, life is at its most intense. On good days, I experience what the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls flow. It is a powerful state in which I am exquisitely conscious of my surroundings, the texture of the granite beneath my fingers, the wind blowing in my hair, the Sun’s rays striking my back, and, always, always, the distance to the last hold below me. Flow goes hand-in-hand with smooth and fluid movements, a
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