What do we miss when we’re seeking the summit over the rightness of the attempt?
"The result is nothing compared to the rightness of the attempt. Keep it right then; and let no desire for result spoil the effort by overstretching the safe limits within which it must move... The summit may, in any particular case, lie outside the course... Good Fortune! And the 'resolution to return' even against ambition!"
These are the words George Mallory received in a letter from his friend and mentor Geoffrey Young in anticipation of his first attempt to climb Everest.
While Mallory was climbing a literal mountain, Young’s guidance is equally applicable to the metaphorical mountains we all seek to climb in our lives.
How often do we get caught up in the success of the summit and at what cost?
When we consider mountains we have climbed, want to climb or have been unable to climb, how does our result compare to the rightness of the attempt?
When has ambition risked taking us beyond a point of no return? What drives that ambition?
Taking Young’s letter further it seems to ask what is the right balance of ambition and drive for an outcome?
Interestingly Mallory’s response to Young asked ‘At what point am I going to stop?’ Before going on to confess that ‘I almost hope I shall be the first to give out!’
The summit attempt was unsuccessful, but Mallory would be back less than a year later for a second attempt. While he broke the record for height climbed in his second attempt, his record was broken within days by his colleague on the expedition, George Finch. Days from the monsoon, the planned deadline for summit attempts on this second expedition, and against initial medical advice, Mallory went for one more summit attempt. In this third effort 7 Tibetan Sherpas were killed by an avalanche, an outcome Mallory felt personally responsible for.
In 1924 Mallory would not return from his final attempt on Everest.
In Joseph Cambell’s Hero’s Journey, a framework for the journeys we all go through in life, the final stage is the return with gifts or the elixir, bringing back the rewards and learnings that the hero gains from stepping into the unknown world and their transformation through ordeal. (This ordeal isn’t to glorify suffering, especially unavoidable suffering, more to acknowledge the difficulty that comes with transformation that allows us to claim our reward before returning with the elixir.)
When ambition overthrows the resolution to return, what do we and others stand to miss out on or even lose?
In the summits of your life, what does a right attempt look like?
How may desire for the result get in the way of the right way?
What are the right limits in which ambition must move?
What is it that resolves you to return more than ambition?
References
Wade Davis, Into the Silence. The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest (2016)
