When I first climbed in the Adirondacks in 2021, my guide was a 21 year old kid from Ohio who ran away from missionary school to climb mountains full time. He told me he spent all day guiding old people who would lament to him that they had spent their entire lives sitting behind desks doing jobs that didn’t fulfill them and now they were excited to do what they loved with what little physical ability they had left. “I didn’t want to spend my life doing something I hated just so one day I could do something I loved,” he told me. Inspired by that kid, I spent 10 days in the red rocks of Utah and they were some of the most incredible days of my life. Sometimes we spend so much of our life confined to such a narrow spectrum of happiness; we think the peaks are global maxima and don’t realize far greater peaks lie just around the next bend. Data science, writing, building movements, sure, all of that makes me happy, but being in the outdoors and pushing my mind and body to new limits is a whole other level of being blessed. When I was climbing Mount Toubkal in 2019, I would stop every 15 minutes and catch my breath, drink water, wonder what I was doing with my life, and also read Qur’an. On the mountain that day, my app randomly opened to a verse that has stuck with me to this day and that I turn to often for solace. “He it is Who hath made the earth subservient unto you, so Walk in the paths thereof and eat of His providence.“ (67:15) 💚
