Mountains and Conquests

Mountains look formidable from a distance. When you start ascending them, a slow realisation hits you that they are more seductive than formidable. You conquer heights and your vision expands. Finally you are there, at the zenith, with a whole world lying stretched before you. What was it that I dreaded before I began the ascent? You wonder. And you look at the higher peak that catches your eyes. It beckons you like a seductress.

Why don’t you surrender to that seduction? It’s so much better to be there on a peak, breathing in the smell of the pines, looking at a wider horizon, and wishing you were a bird that could stretch out the wings and fly, fly away, rather than be down here listening to quotidian slogans shouted by faceless mouths. What’s more: you realise that you have just conquered a peak but that you have conquered yourself.

 

From Richard Bach

You have conquered yourself. That’s the real ascent. Now you see things differently as a result of that conquest. You don’t see the creatures at a distance far below you as small entities, much inferior to you. On the contrary, you see how small you are with respect to the vast landscape that lies unfolded before you.

Those who have ascended great heights and then begin to see others as small creatures are pathetic indeed. Such people’s greatness depends solely on belittling others. In other words, they are great only in comparison with others’ smallness. Such people have to highlight the littleness or inferiority of the others in order to prove themselves big or superior. How sad that is!

Your greatness should emerge from your own inner worth, your intrinsic qualities. If others are not as great as you are, help them to become as great as you or even greater than you. That is your greatness. Every time you belittle a fellow creature, you become smaller than what you are now.