Learning from the Mountains

Mountains. Majesty, serenity, panorama, elevation and exhilaration. These are some of the associations that come to our mind when we think of mountains. These tall standing sons of Mother Earth have always stirred the imagination of poets, inspired artists and, been peaceful home to saints.

In addition to all this there are certain valuable lessons of life that they offer us.

The Journey of Life – Winding Through Mountainous Paths

Life is like scaling mountains. We begin the climb enthusiastically at the foot of the mountain, with the peak in sight. However, some immediate obstacles make us lose sight of the peak. But surmounting them we regain the sight of our goal and move on towards it.

When scaling mountains diversions and reversals often occur. However, they are to be treated as part of the journey and not termed as ‘failures’.

Many times there are no well defined paths and one has to create new ones. These parts of the journey require time, focus, faith and patience. One needs courage to traverse this part of the journey, else end up on known paths that lead to someone else’s destination.

A Typical Life’s Run – Over Hills and Dales

Life’s journey is an interesting one, but often perilous for many.

Most people start their study, work or social life with enthusiasm. They continue striving their way upwards, even in the face of adversities and do learn and grow in the process. And then, most people at some point in their lives face an enormous obstacle – a death drop down a cliff. There is a massive jolt to their confidence, faith and purpose.

The tragic part is that most people of this world never recover from this experience! They get infected by the worst cancer – indifference. This makes them lead a mediocre, ‘safe’ life – devoid of satisfaction and plagued with blames.

However, a few people do recover, learn from their mistakes and move on to becoming achievers. They pay the price of ego and imbibe the quality of humility. Forging a strong character that knows how to stay well-grounded during both successes and obstacles, they move upwards again with a renewed confidence and purpose towards their destination. And they make it to their chosen peaks.

Peak to Peak – Only Through a Valley

The path from one peak of achievement to another is never through ropeways; one has to pass through a valley.

Often success in one field makes one feel that success in another endeavour is easy. However, one has to walk down again into a valley and commence the march afresh – learning new skills and developing new attitudes. Often this involves unlearning the learnt. One needs to willingly walk down this valley of ‘knowing nothing’, becoming a nursery student from a doctorate scholar, for scaling newer peaks.

Moving to the Next Peak – Leaving Known Shores for New Seas

Often when we have reached a chosen peak, our tendency is to hold onto it. We are not willing to move on to scaling newer peaks appearing on the horizon. We are comfortable with the known and experience fear in leaving it behind and going after a new expedition.

However, there is a threat in harbouring this tendency. Sooner or later the peak we are on becomes irrelevant. Consider what happened to the typewriter when the computer came along; it simply got displaced by a different technology.

There was a time when there was a boom for long distance call booths (STD) in our country. The mobile phone technology got introduced, and with affordable handsets and lower tariffs they pushed the STD booth business to near extinction.

Thus, at times it becomes necessary to leave known peaks, walk down into the valley and start scaling new peaks. If we decide to consciously walk down the slope, we remain in control.

However, if we are pushed downhill we lose control and may be in for a rude shock.

Thus, the journey of life is a continuous march from known peaks to new ones.

We have so much to learn from the lessons that the mountains offer us.

For our journey of life to be successful we need to have a vision of the peaks we want to scale, a sense of purpose that keeps us going, conviction in our abilities when the path becomes difficult, courage in creating new paths that lead us to our peaks, the ability to withstand setbacks and to learn from them and move on, and finally the valour to move onto newer peaks on the journey called life.