We will have to suffer. Although we are neither adapted or prepared for it. But we can endure it, If we are clear about the goal and we work as a good team. The history of our species demonstrates it. Many people before we endured all kinds of deprivations and hardships, even when they were dragged to the limit of the tolerable by our body. Nazi concentration camps, those Stalin in Siberia or the terror imposed by Mao in China, There are a few examples of what, In modern times, The human being has had to endure. And also of the cruelty and misfortunes that can cause. As a species we were able to create art and culture, Cultural language and transmission, learn from experiences and add them to ours; So they were possible Cervantes and Shakespeare, Velázquez and Las Meninas, Bach and the camera orchestra, But we were also able to create gas cameras and organize meaningless wars, cruelty and genocides.
Victor Frankl wrote a beautiful book, "Man in search of meaning", About his terrible experience in a Nazi concentration camp in which he survived all unimaginable horror. It is a book that, still, It is a reference and a good example of what we can achieve if we propose it, If we look for that sense to which Victor refers, although, ultimately, be goals that are above our realities. Frankl's goal was to survive to tell it, The goal of making that terrible experience was imposed so that it would not be repeated again. And he succeeded.
We will have to suffer, But we can bear it if we have the goal clear and we work as a good team
Those dragged to a war or a concentration camp had no other possibility, Just try to survive. But what pushes a marathon or a cyclist to take his effort beyond the limits of our body? Or a mountaineer to climb a mountain in winter in the Karakorum? I ask myself now. What do I do here, cold? I imagine that my friends will be asking now the same question, supporting on your shoulders the load of your backpack and, In his head, The weight of the absence of their loved ones. It is certainly a contradiction. But we are a contradictory species. I, course. I guess we have to live with them trying to solve them or learning to live with them. Sometimes I think it can be an escape, Although I don't know what we run away.
Anyone can imagine that I like as much as I am at home more, Enjoy family and talk with friends, enjoy my profession, Go to the theater or a concert. But, at the same time, When we are installed in comfort, We immediately need to overflow our reality, impose new projects that anticipate the future and that many times is not that they go over our possibilities but are above our realities.
What pushes an mountaineer to climb a mountain in the karakorum in winter?
From the origin of our civilization we have continuously expand them, being the engine of the unstoppable advance of humanity. We need to know everything, But at the same time we need everything to be mysterious and attractive. The only way to know the limits of the possible is to venture in the impossible. They are diffuse and changing limits. That always demand a different look, because the adventure is traveled by the wild routes of the world and the inner abyss of ourselves. Many adventurers before we fell under that contradictory influence, which is the union of action and intelligence. Columbus and Galileo, Co -person and Magellan, Humboldt and Darwin.
We need to know, go further, advance in the plots of the unknown, In what nobody has done before, Where no one has arrived. They move imagination and hope as much as the need, Glory or promise of wealth. It is the story of human adventure. We move for reason and emotion, We are a mixture of both. Emotion and knowledge are aimed at superior action: We love, We explore and know to act intelligently and not to the contrary. We anticipate the future by imposing impossible goals, But that force us to display all our capacities. That would be a good synthesis of what we have set.
We need to know, go further, advance in the plots of the unknown, In what nobody has done before, Where no one has arrived
Someone could say, As my mother told me so many times, that I have no need to be here, cold. But it is a goal that I have imposed and that I share with seven other friends. That is why I am now here voluntarily supporting such hard conditions. We probably don't have a 10% possibilities of reaching that tiny summit that rises above six thousand meters in the middle of winter, lashed by winds that shake you and with temperatures incompatible with life. But we want to try. It is the fact of imposing these goals that makes us specifically human. And we can't stay still once reached, because satisfaction is provided by the action of undertaking it. What makes us happy is not having loved, but be loving ...
Therefore, 30 years later, I find myself again at the Karakorum.
