Sunday, May 1, 2016

Rushing

A couple years ago my employer did Safe Start training. One of the four states of mind that leads to problems is rushing. This hit me like a sack of bricks last week when I spent three unpleasant nights in basecamp. Well, I didn’t realize I was rushing exactly until I descended and felt great. I knew that I ascended fast and that was why I was feeling poorly, but I didn’t think of it as rushing until I knew that it was beyond my limit. It’s one of those things, if it works out, you’re an efficient monster, if it fails, you’re a rushing idiot. 

It is the same way in much of life. We speed in our cars to get to a place one or two minutes earlier, usually with no consequences, until you get into an accident because you were speeding. We rush from one social appointment to another without really listening to what our friend was saying. 

It’s funny, I came here a week later than everyone else because I wanted to trying running a race before going on an expedition, something I had never tried before. Early indications are it worked. I could have probably used another day or two at sea level to recover muscularly but I am fine. However, when I got here I felt like I was playing catch up, even though my plan all along was to summit later in the season after much of the fanfare had worn away and the mountain was a little less crowded. Now I’m here and people are talking about May 5th and May 10th summits, and there is absolutely no way I will be ready to summit by then!


The lesson here is that feeling are not fact, and by rushing from one thing to the next you might not be giving each activity, or more importantly each person, including yourself, the time she or he (or you) deserve. 

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