“Soooo, hypothetically, if
there was a fundraising trip to help save the
Rhino’s and you got to be part of a team
to trek to Everest base camp this year, would
you be keen?”
- Evangeline
(my friend), Whatsapp, a few weeks ago
I’m going to Everest. I've been saying that to myself a lot over the past few
weeks, like a lottery winner repeating over and over to himself, “I’m a
millionaire. I’m a millionaire.” before he’s had time to go out and make some
bad financial decisions. And every time I say it Debussy’s Claire de Lune plays
as the soundtrack in my mind like one of Billy Ocean
Obscure Movie Reference: Billy Ocean's 11 - Bellagio Foutains
Maybe going to Everest isn't like winning the actual lottery, but you can bet that if I did win the lottery, Everest would be right at the
top of my shopping list. But I'd be lying if I said that going to Everest has always been one of my biggest dreams. Rather, it's been one of
those barely-formed dreams- you know like becoming an astronaut or
flying a fighter jet or being actual real actual Kelly Slater. These are the
dreams that one never really cares to build on because of the sheer
improbability of them. They just linger in the back of your mind with all the
other wouldn’t-it-be-nices.
In
all honesty, Everest only joined my list of improbable dreams some time after
Christmas. I was doing a little subconscious audit of my dreams (see fig.1) when a subconscious map of the World subconsciously slipped into my minds eye,
and I thought, “Flip, I'd like to go to ALL the places! What are the chances?”
Fig.1:
Subconscious Dream Audit
So I
started this quick subconscious calculation (people who like to calculate
stuff, I’m sure you can relate):
192
– countries in the world (United Nations
figure).
18 –
countries I’ve been to.
15
(approx) – Middle Eastern and countries ending in “stan” that I don’t want to
visit.
192 - (18+15) = 159 countries
still to visit
28
yrs old – current age
80
yrs old – life expectancy as expected by me
80 - 28 = 52 years still to
live
159 countries divided by 52
years to live = 3 to 4 countries/year
I
don’t want to be a pessimist here but like, that’s impossible! The chances of going to ALL the places are slim. So I narrowed it
down: “Which places do I have to see before I die?”
- Seychelles etc.
And
then I relaxed and did no more thinking or calculations. But later, after I’d
finished relaxing, I thought, “What if you had to be extravagant? No calculations,
no listing of your favorites, no surfing-takes-priority, just pure, selfish, no
logic wishes.” à Everest.
Around
this time, but unrelated to the event, I felt God telling me to dream big. I
mean live-in-Hawaii-famous-author-be-actual-real-actual-Kelly-Slater big! I
know everyone wants to dream big like a motivational poster, but I think my
dream-big mechanism had been broken for a while and God needed to remind me how it worked. So
I listened. I wrote down some of my big dreams and set in motion some plans to
achieve them. Everest was not among those dreams. I hadn’t really thought of it
as a dream really, just a wish.
But I've become accustomed to God surprising me with unexpected stuff.
Sometimes it’s not great stuff (He calls it character building), and other times He
blows my mind by answering prayers I haven’t even had time to pray. Being all-knowing He knows the "silly wishes" that linger in the back of my mind with all the other rubbish and half formed twitter updates that get stuck back there. Why he chose to pull this one out of the random file, and not oh say, "becoming really good at break dancing", I just don't know. But he has, and I'm lank pumped! I'm going to Everest!
Nice!
ReplyDeleteThanks Shano :)
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