"Who Am I"? This is a question that has been on my mind (and perhaps many fellow climbers) numerous times throughout the 2007 Everest Expedition.
Who am I? This question appears at interesting times: while dangling from a rope, crossing a ladder over a bottomless crevasse, dodging avalanches, seeing a dead body being carried down the mountain, climbing through the Khumbu Icefall in the early morning and hoping a chunk of ice the size of a house doesn't decide to fall and crush me, climbing the seemingly vertical Lhotse face where rocks and ice fall violently and erratically right towards me, or simply lying in my tent - during these exciting, hectic and tranquil times I ask myself "Who Am I"?
I have been thinking deeply about this simple yet perplexing question.
After a proper period of reflection, it became apparent to me that I was not just a name, not just a brother, not just a son, not just a someday father or husband, not just a climber, not just a businessman.
I discovered that it is a fundamental flaw to define ourselves by our physical presence. This is because our physical attributes are consistently regenerating.
The human body pretty much regenerates itself every year, some organs grow faster than others. Hair continues to grow no matter how we cut it (for most of us, anyway), and the skin we sport today was not there six months ago. Nor will it be with you six months from now. Even your internal organs slowly die and rebuild.
So if we aren't entirely defined by our physical attributes or the name we give ourselves, how are we defined? Some believe we are defined by a spirit or by the spirituality that guides the decisions we make in life. I think that approach is part of the answer, but I think there's more.
"We are defined by the experiences and actions of our lifetime".
We are defined by years of fun and boredom, of excitement and terror, of pleasure and pain, of love and loathing. Some portion of the weathering and scars is visible. Some of it lies much deeper. We are defined by the friends we have kept as well as those we elected not to. We are a product of the things we controlled as well as the stuff that landed on our laps courtesy of fate, chance, bad luck, or destiny.
Now I ask you (the audience) - who are you? |
