One aim, one goal, one touchable summit

I watched the movie this week and then went straight online to gauge the reaction. As expected, it has both admirers and haters. Some are complaining that the facts have been blurred or left out, while others point out that “movies aren’t documentaries”. And there’s the usual “Mountain climbers are nuts” thread. Yet for me, one particular scene absolves the filmmakers of all their sins. A climber touches the rock that marks Everest’s summit, and suddenly “Because it’s there” is right in front of our face.

Everest is the most tangible and undisputed measurement of a person’s perseverance. If you want to be the world’s best athlete, how do you define ultimate success? The same goes for the world’s best singer, business executive, journalist, politician, freedom fighter or even priest. Those “goals” keep shifting and much depends on the judgement of others, not ourselves. When you get “there”, you’ll likely realise there is no “there”. That’s the problem with setting ourselves a goal these days.

The tip of the Everest never eludes us. It just sits there, defying anyone to show the courage to touch it. We all know it isn’t easy, but to climb to the top of the world, at the cruising altitude of a commercial jet, snow-blind, oxygen-starved and literally risking your life in the process, is the most “realistic” goal we can have. There’s nothing beyond the summit. There is no further point to prove. There is nothing more, and nothing less.

Commercials implore us not to be satisfied with what we have, to always reach higher. This is the world in which most of us live, a place where “good” is always “not enough”, where “better” is ambiguous and where “best” is always relative and, ultimately, elusive. It’s a world where comparison matters more than anything. But for mountaineers, the goal is the same for everyone and it doesn’t matter who else achieves it. Everest doesn’t become higher or lower just because someone else has scaled it. Touch the top and the ultimate goal is unalterably achieved.

That I could never get beyond base camp doesn’t make me a bad person, one might argue. For all the talk of the democratic inclusiveness of Everest’s challenge, physical conditioning is crucial, and only the very-fit stand a chance of making it to the top. The point is that the mountain offers a lesson in holding realistic goals in life and not comparing ourselves to others.

As kids, we dream of having Bt50,000 in the bank. When we start working, that desired figure balloons to hundreds of thousands. After a few years, it becomes a million and then several million. And when we finally reach those dizzy heights, we want more still. We keep setting higher goals not so much because of the challenge, but merely because they come within reach. Yet while our financial summits grow ever larger, Everest’s peak remains the same, never taller or shorter.

Well, choose between a billion baht and setting foot on top of Everest, then. Many will choose the former, because most of us live in a different world to that of mountain climbers. There’s nothing wrong with that choice, but we shouldn’t make the mistake of ridiculing mountaineers as a deluded bunch who gain satisfaction from torturing themselves to near-death. Their goal is a lot more realistic than ours.

You could also argue that life has more to offer than just scaling the highest mountain. If someone conquers Everest at the age of, say, 35, what’s next? Won’t he or she have to go back to the unreal goals of finding the “best mate”, having the “best wedding”, and providing the kids with the “best education”?

All I can say is that whatever new goals they do set, he or she will be better equipped to see through all the nonsense. More importantly, they will be able to separate what’s really “there” from what is not. After all, life’s path is scattered with both pleasures and pitfalls, and we must survive through thick and thin – sometimes with the best equipment and sometimes on our own. 

That will sound very familiar to mountain climbers.