Alternative title: The Beginning is the End is the Beginning; The End is the Beginning is the End
I think the point they were trying to make is that you never really know how to feel when the culmination of a dream actually happens. For real. Ending a dream has that same feeling of an anticlimax as is waking up, even if the dream was sweet, even when the dream was a nightmare.
I hate endings. I hate it when dreams come true.
Very soon, and not soon enough, and not too soon, tu et moi will be in the same country. For the first time permanently in what is almost a year. I recall asking you how you felt about that, and all you told me were practical things, sensible things. Things like fear of being here, anxiety at culture shock, but happiness of finally being in the same g------ country.
I thought about what I felt, which were a whole miasma of strange and unexpected things. Guilt at having my wishes come true for once, fulfilment for having my wishes come true, at least, anxiety for thinking that I may not want what I'm wishing for.
A guest speaker at the All Hands Summit I recently went to was the first woman who had ever climbed Everest from both the North and South sides. She came to give one of those inspirational speeches, and I suppose having mounted the highest mountain in the world sort of gives one that right to give inspirational speeches.
Funny thing was, she started the speech with the statistics of Everest - 75% failure rate, 1% death rate. The meat of the speech was peppered with cliches like "It really is all about team work" and "You cannot do it alone." and "The two things which make climbers fail are over-confidence and giving up. They lose in their minds far before the mountain overcomes them."
Even funnier was how she described the first time she had reached the summit. She said, "My first thought was, 'And that's it?' You climb and climb until you reach a point where there is nowhere else higher to go. It felt anticlimatic." So much for inspirational speeches.
Somehow that statement about the summit sealed it for me. It almost made me feel right about what I thought about trying to reach the seemingly impossible. In the first place, I was cynical. I have absolute disdain for people stupid enough to try to reach places where no sane creature would want to go. Everest being one of them. You could not persuade me up there unless there is a 5 star hotel, a butler in a tuxedo, champagne and beluga caviar and an elevator waiting up there to take me down in style.
It absolutely made me feel the futility of ambition in that one sweeping sentence. Why do people try for higher? Why do we risk life and limb reaching a point whereby there is simply nowhere else to go? In aiming for dizzying heights, we do no different than build ourselves into a corner. The hard way.
I've often been accused of being overly ambitious. People look at me and think that I'm trying absolutely hard to become the best in the field, good at everything, millionaire by 35. And I try to defend myself by saying that it is the journey that matters, not the destination. If I liked climbing mountains, reaching the summit of Everest would be waking up from a very good dream. It would be reaching a point where I thought, "Oh no, there's nowhere else to go, now everything goes downhill from here." Same thing for me with what I do every day at work.
So one of your biggest predictions is that one day I will soon surpass the things you do. We are jogging, you and I, in the middle of a large, pretty park. I run faster (I guess) because I've found my pace, and this is how I like to go. And you tell me to slow down, thinking you won't catch up. I do anyway. And I still have as much fun as I had before when I was going faster. Since anyway, I'm in it for the run, I'm slowing down to take in the scenery, to do something better for my heart. It probably gives me an excuse not to reach the end as quickly anyway, which isn't something I'm looking forward to.
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