Egos in the Outdoors

“A trekker has a very tough ascent of Kilimanjaro, goes through all the stages of difficulty, wants it enough, pushes hard on the summit night, and achieves the top. But when back at sea level and it becomes time to tell the story, Kilimanjaro suddenly has new layers added to it in creative hindsight that pushes an already admirable achievement from being something that mere mortals can reach, to something next to impossible.”

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was my first day of law school, excited, nervous but somewhat content in the idea that, at the very least, the immediate path was clear. Done were the ambiguous days that accompanied my final high school years. I had decided I was going to be a lawyer. And there I was, finally sat in the lecture hall waiting on our first year course leader to deliver her welcome speech to the future generation of lawyers. A lot was said during that lecture but the one thing that stuck with me a decade and a half later went something like this:

“Look at the people on either side of you.” She said confidently with an obvious smirk on her face. “One of the people you just looked at will not finish this course and between the three of you, only one of you will ever qualify as a lawyer.” Now there is a high degree of truth in describing this particular career trajectory as arduous. But, what I didn’t understand at the time, and that I learned over my years of study, was that if you have the cognitive capacity to get accepted on the program, then the only thing missing was wanting it and taking responsibility for wanting it by putting in the hours necessary to make it possible. But in choosing not to talk about what it takes to succeed, the lecturer went from directing us on the path to success, to disabling us and creating a sense of ambiguity and inaccessibility around what it takes to essentially become her. Her welcome lecture actually had nothing to do with us. It was all a matter of self-validation. It was telling a cohort of would-be lawyers that there is a certain je ne sais quoi that separates those who can from those who won’t.

“So the next time someone tries to put you off taking your first steps in the outdoors by telling you how they could do it but you can’t, ask yourself if this person isn’t just another first year course leader trying to self-validate at the expense of enabling you to reach the places you want to reach.”

Fast forward 15 years into the future and the same recurring theme seems to accompany success in the outdoors. The story tends to go something like this: A trekker has a very tough ascent of Kilimanjaro, goes through all the stages of difficulty, wants it enough, pushes hard on the summit night, and achieves the top. But when back at sea level and it becomes time to tell the story, Kilimanjaro suddenly has new layers added to it in creative hindsight that pushes an already admirable achievement from being something that mere mortals can reach, to something next to impossible.

The truth is that anyone with a good cognitive capacity and willing to put in the hours can become a lawyer. Anyone with motor control, a formerly basic pre-requisite that is currently being challenged, and a desire to summit mountains can go the distance and achieve incredible things if they want it and are willing to put in what it takes to achieve it. 99% of climbers are not super humans. They are people just like you who decided that they wanted it for themselves and they went out to make it happen. So the next time someone tries to put you off taking your first steps in the outdoors by telling you how they could do it but you can’t, ask yourself if this person isn’t just another first year course leader trying to self-validate at the expense of enabling you to reach the places you want to reach.

This article was inspired by a conversation with a fellow mountaineer who described an experience of asking for advice from a local mountaineering legend on climbing Denali. The advice he got was not to go and that he would never have what it takes. He summited Denali.