What is it? I've never been one to give up, in fact, I've never reached the point where I've said I would give up. But last Saturday at 7am in the morning, I sat on the rocks on the final stretch of Mt Rinjani and uttered the words, "guys, I don't think I can do this".There is something very scary about looking inside and finding...nothing. Nothing but a gaping abyss where once your goals and hopes and dreams used to once upon a time sit. Nothing in the strength of motivation or that little niggling competitiveness that pushes you to want to even TRY. Nothing.
That stretch of Mt Rinjani could act as a metaphor for my work life currently, where sometimes I just sit back, look at what I'm doing and wonder whether there's anything more to this. I do not want to be 40 and be facing the same set of work. I really don't. That is what I'm so sure at this point, if of nothing else.
Anyway, Rinjani was a refreshing, albeit an out of character moment for me, normally I would be the person hauling everyone else up the mountain but this time I just felt. Tired. Mentally and physically. That being said, some of the best moments on this trip proved to me as it always happens to be, that when you put your mind to it, you can do anything. Absolutely anything. Even when you have nothing left to pull out.
Other moments like sitting by a firelight, finally feeling warm. There's something so elemental about a fire, after all we are reliant on aircons most of the time, but a fire? A fire for warmth and not for cooking...now that is a treat, and makes me marvel at how life can be so different by circumstance. I could be in a tent in the middle of a Sahara living a nomadic lifestyle, or at the top of the highest skyscraper on this earth. All because of where I am born, and maybe that's what is so interesting about life, that everyone lives it so, so differently, and yet we only catch but an inkling of what life is like for some people outside of the radius of our normal lives. And maybe this was always the case through history? That everyone lived so differently, settled across continents, lives taking shape and taking root until we all ended up with different languages, culture, skin colour, food.
Stories, stories of death. Of life. Of magical caves that deem you worthy of entering. Of seven mysterious deaths off a cliff. Of things within the crater lake. Things that you respect. Especially when being told in the dead of the night in a forest. Good god.
Sometimes you're faced with unexplained things, which you have to just accept as is. There are things in this world that cannot be explained. Reality is at best tenuous.
