Mountains and Mirages

It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

Sir Edmund Hillary

We were born with a natural instinct to better ourselves, our evolutional search for the next mountain. However, life is not filled with clear mountains for us to climb, and part of our work is finding which summit we want to set our sights on.

We learn to eat, walk, and speak without even knowing what we’re doing. As we grow, we set our eyes on newer, tougher mountains in our lives. Maybe this is to make an athletic varsity team, get into the school of our dreams, earn a promotion, or chase our passion unapologetically.

We’ve known how to search out goals and how to work toward them since we were little. But, we were never trained to make sure we’re summiting the right mountain. We’ve all experienced it before… Where we reached the goal we had worked hard for all these years only to find out that it didn’t bring us the happiness, bliss, and joy that we thought it would.

Over the last few years, I’ve had the opportunity to dissect the times in my life this has happened (and it’s happened a lot). Each time I gained a better understanding of myself, but it came at a price. When I realized I wasn’t even on the right mountain range I had this feeling that I had taken a step back, that all the hard work I put in was for nothing.

In taking the time to analyze these moments, I began to learn more about where I really was in life. The peaks of my aspirations were protected by only one powerful foe: delusion. They formed a mirage that let me see what I wanted – the right college, the nice internship, the prestigious job, all making me think I was moving ahead when really I was just turning up the speed on the treadmill.

Getting sick was the blessing I needed. As I became distanced from that life I had been chasing, I was able to see how deceptive the mirage had been. It was guiding my life without me even knowing it and that’s what made it so dangerous. As a result, I’ve learned how important it is to frequently check-in and get clear on what you are moving towards and why.

It’s a lesson I continue to learn. Recently, I had been feeling frustrated about my treatments and their slow progression. Two years of incessant physical pain can really begin to weigh on you. Even worse, it felt like I was losing control of my life. The way my subconscious chose to protect me was to ignore what was happening with my health and to control my effort in golf. I practiced golf as much as I could but my body hurt so much there were times all I wanted to do was yell out. I’d been doing this for over a year.

This struggle lifted when I finally realized that I was avoiding the uncomfortable task at hand – that I needed to change my priorities and my assessment of what a “successful life” should be for me right now. It’s not playing golf, it’s my health. Upon seeing this I realized I needed to move to be around people and closer to things that could help me become better. I became proactive in my process and in doing so regained control of my life.

Pain or struggle doesn’t go away by ignoring it but rather by facing it head-on and seeing what it is trying to teach us. Our blind spots are often staring us dead in the eyes but we do anything to avoid the true path ahead of us.

So how do we find the right mountain to climb?

I’ve found the three questions help keep me engaged with and clear about what I’m working towards:

1. Why do I want to do this?
2. How do I want to show up for it?
3. Who do I want to become through this process?

It is important to keep asking ourselves these as they set a framework for understanding what is important and what something flashy trying to grab our attention.

Without checking in with these tough questions, we can miss when we are setting off towards the wrong mountain top. We avoid them because they often bring pain and make us reconsider all of our previous work. Growth is being able to accept when we were wrong and begin on our more educated path with renewed vigor.

The key is to pay attention to when the universe and events in your life are trying to tell you something.

I have a friend who has wanted to become a doctor but chose a different field as it seemed safer. As we began talking about this earlier in the year, things began to line up. COVID pushed back the date of his MCATs and his company furloughed half the company. All of this gave him the exact amount of time to prepare for the test. The universe paved a way for him.

Each of us is trying to find what our true mountain in life is. In most cases, we will have multiple. I can’t tell you what yours may be, only you can do that.

What I can tell you is the quieter I’ve become, the more I pay attention, and the more I go with the flow of life, the easier it has been for me to see through the fog to the mountain beyond. Shed your delusions and find what is truly meaningful to you in this life.