Thursday, January 30, 2014

Writing, Because I am Afraid to Talk

I want to look you in the eyes and tell you my thoughts. I want to tell you everything about Mt. Everest. I want to answer your questions. I want to see the emotion. I want to hear about your life too. What drives you? How can I help? What have I done wrong to you?

I want to tell you about the world, about poverty and starving children. I want to tell you about suffering. I want to cry with you. I want to laugh with you until we cry.

I want to stay awake talking until the sunrise. I want to be vulnerable. I want you to know everything I know. I won't always be here, and some of this stuff is helpful. 

I want to talk to you about the passion I have had for nine years of climbing Mt. Everest that is happening this year. Yet, I despise my own seemingly endless bragging, and thus I have great difficulty talking about the hill. I want to tell you there are dozens of things to be afraid of. I want to tell you that if everything goes really well, according to plan, at the summit of the experience I will have an 8% of dying in the next 72 hours. How can I possibly tell you that?! That is not a conversation starter. In so many respects it is all so selfish. I could donate the money directly to a Nepalese charity instead of hiring a group to help me put my life in danger. 

When I return I will run to the Mines of Spain and bicycle to Balltown if I am able. I will go to work and try to make better designed structures. Hopefully I will be just as healthy June 30th as I am January 30th. Whatever happens up there, the world will keep spinning. 

I want to talk to you about the immediacy I feel in my life and how you have made my life better. It's like pulling teeth. The petty, safe, comfortable, and sometime mediocre world we live in is too easy to remain. The hard issues are so difficult to talk about! The hard realities are just so painful, emotional and serious!

I want to tell you so many things. Yet it is so much easier to inquire about your life or talk about the minor details in my life. You are fascinating. I'm serious. Your story is so different than mine that I honestly don't understand it. I want to know your details. Those things which torment us the most are also the most personal. Yours truly, writing, because I am afraid to talk.

I struggle.

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