Editorial by Sam Plavins, Photo by Caroline Prasetyo

It’s 2:35 in the morning. My feet are blocks of ice; my hands, clumps of frozen meat. I am breathless, but not because I’m moving fast. No, no, no, no, no. My pace is a sluggish, astronaut-on-the-moon type speed. The air is still, dry, and thin at 18,500 feet in Ecuador.

Each step I take ends in a thud as my boots grind into the glacier rock beneath. My head is a woozy rush of thoughts: what the hell am I doing this again for? Why didn’t I tape up that bloody blister? And, most importantly, how much farther to the summit?!

To be straight with you? I’m a disaster. But I chose this. I dreamed of it. Trained for it. And this misery is what I love.

Some context:

My first foray into mountaineering seemed like a joke. I was a 34-year-old indoor girl who couldn’t figure out how to inflate her self-inflating Therm-a-Rest. My crampons were sparkly and still in the box. I’d thrown myself headfirst into a sport full of risk and uncertainty, desperate to escape my predictable life. See, I’d followed that formula we’re all given. I’d nabbed a degree, climbed the corporate ladder, married my love, and popped out some kids. At the precipice of each of these monumental milestones, I’d waited for that rush of fulfillment I was promised. But it never came. I mean, it did. But then it disappeared.

And each time it slipped away, I’d flog myself in shame. I had what everyone fought hard to get. By society’s standard, I was a success. Why couldn’t I be happy? What was wrong with me? What the deuce?

Well? I was living the same lie you and I have fallen for. Guys—we have been duped!

Sold a bill of goods, urged to have it all, because having it “all” was going to fill us up. I call bullshit.

I was hypnotized by the idea that everything over here was going to make me happy. I was in a constant state of hustling. Chasing. Running. Never ever satisfied. I was climbing literal and metaphorical mountains in hot pursuit of that summit. And I reached it, many times in my life—only to admire the view for a few minutes, then realize “crap. I have to get down and start again.” Ask me how it feels to climb back down when you’ve nothing left in the tank, when your legs feel like spaghetti, and your stomach is an inside-out knotted mess from eating away at itself. Fun fact: your body eats its own tissue at an altitude where the oxygen is just half that of sea level. Collapsing in the snow seems like the only option. But you cannot stay at 20,000 feet forever. Just like you cannot sustain joy, success, and fulfillment forever.

Back on that mountain in Ecuador, I looked up at the summit so within my grasp. Then, I looked up at the stars. For the first time—maybe ever, in all the mountains I’d climbed—I noticed them. It was like someone plugged me into an adult-sized Lite-Brite board, like the one I’d played with as a little girl. Constellations danced in golden orbs of fire and it suddenly hit me: I didn’t have to reach the summit to know I was good enough, to feel it had all been worthwhile, that I’d gotten my money’s worth, that I’d done a good job. That I was a “success.” In that freezing cold moment, I threw down my ice axe and told my guide Joaquin, “I’m done.”

“You sure, Sam?” he questioned.

“More than ever,” I said. I’d had enough and was happy to turn around while I still had the juice to do so. My whole world experienced a paradigm shift from that point forward. I’d discovered that my joy wasn’t up there. Or over here. My joy was only found when I embraced the opposite—the pain. My joy crept in and sustained itself once I accepted that life is going to be fucking hard. And it’s up to me to assign the richest, deepest meaning to it.

So here’s what I believe: joy is not a finish line. It’s not a summit. It’s not the children we have or the dreams we realize.

Joy is in the living. It’s in the mess of our lives. The failures, the blisters, the false summits, the climbing back down, and the tiny realization that we’re a part of this massive thing called humanity. I’m still climbing literal and metaphorical mountains in life. But I no longer ask myself how much farther to the summit. The question I now ask is “how lucky am I to be on the mountain in the first place?”