Being irrational is key to happiness, according to lifelong adventurer Peter Sherwood at least
Being irrational is key to happiness, according to lifelong adventurer Peter Sherwood at least
I got this cute little silver Inca in the Andes mountains a lifetime ago, when he was already as antique as I am now. Hell, he could be older than the diesel engine and Jack the Ripper. We’ve taken some perilous journeys, him with no choice, swinging as he was on a chain around my neck until a girlfriend expressed her displeasure, saying it made me look like a Colombian drug dealer. Being Peruvian, Inca man was likely offended by such geographical blasphemy. But not me. It was either I drop the icon or the lady, and the little bloke would probably cope better in storage than a vivacious blond.
He’d visited mountains and jungles over decades but had never been back home – until a Swiss friend, Kurt, announced he was off to climb Aconcagua, the highest peak in in the world outside Asia at 6,960.8 metres So, I graciously, generously, burdened him with my precious Inca man. He accepted it as a talisman, swearing on his numbered Swiss bank account to return him safely.
To avoid Acute Mountain Sickness – my specialty – it is sensible to climb high, sleep low, which means slogging up the mountain about three times: ascending and descending exhaustively. As storm clouds and hypothermia loomed at 5,700 metres with wind chill of -32˚C, they hurried down to a chilly 4,300 metres to wait it out.
Inca man thought this was normal for the Swiss, raised as the man must have been, in a lumpy landscape. After 10 days of hard and tedious work, the abiding thought that assails us all after stumbling around mindlessly with little oxygen, now occurred to Kurt: “What the hell am I doing here?” A reasonable question with an opposite answer.
We do it precisely because it’s unreasonable. All the reasonable people are (perfectly reasonably) down below. I suppose that’s the point. Nothing worthwhile and no major changes happen being reasonable. No pain, no gain.
Unhappily all life lessons and consequential changes are born of discomfort, along with stunning memories and a special camaraderie. It requires us to be a bit irrational, illogical, silly, contradictory and different. Reasonable means ordinary and holds no allure. That’s just how things are.
A reasonable Inca man would be sitting in a curiosity shop; his Swiss transport, relaxing in a luxury hotel in the nearby Mendoza vineyards enjoying a glass or two of vintage Malbec. (I’ve stayed in plenty of five-star hotels on the client’s dollar and can recall none of it.)
The summit at 20˚C below zero began the desperate search for Inca man hidden in Kurt’s down jacket. For minutes he fumbled with thick gloves… nothing. More anxious moments as he dug deeper into his pockets, until eureka! Inca man had made it and his Swiss friend breathed sharp, icy sighs of relief in the thin air. He thought, “If I’d lost it, Sherwood would’ve killed me.”