Two Hundred Meters from the Summit
I had just celebrated my 19th birthday and was 200 meters from the highest summit outside of Asia when something shifted.
Two hundred meters.
Close enough that I could almost feel the story I’d tell when I got home. Close enough that the ego starts rehearsing the line: “I made it.”
And then I realized something that stopped me in my tracks.
I hadn’t spent a single minute training to get down.
Every run.
Every weighted step.
Every brutal acclimatization hike.
Every visualization.
It was all about reaching the top.
Not one minute had been devoted to returning.
That realization hit me harder than the altitude.
I now recognize that this wasn’t just about a mountain.
It was about how most of us live.
The Obsession with the Summit
We’re trained to go up.
Up the corporate ladder.
Up the follower count.
Up the income bracket.
Up the mountain.
We set goals.
We build plans.
We grind.
We visualize success. But rarely do we ask:
What happens when I get there?
And even more rarely:
Who will I be on the way back down?
Standing there, I also knew something else. The night before, a climber had gone missing. There was a very real chance I would step over his body on the way to achieving what he hadn’t.
And in that moment, the summit didn’t feel like glory.
It felt fragile.
It felt impermanent.
It felt like something I could cling to… or something I could let go of.
So I turned back.
And on the descent, I found him.
Mike.
He was alive. Barely. And what followed was hours of carrying, supporting, navigating, collapsing, and continuing.
Sometimes I wonder, and I genuinely entertain this, whether my entire training had been to find Mike.
Not to stand on the summit.
But to meet him on the way down.
I’ve Chased Corners My Entire Life
When I say I’ve chased corners my entire life, I don’t mean I’ve been restless for the sake of it.
I mean I’ve always been curious about what’s just out of sight.
As a child, that meant moving between countries, languages, cultures, trying to understand how the same world could look so different depending on where you stood.
In music, it meant not just playing the instrument, but asking: How does this industry actually work? I booked tours from a small apartment without making a dollar because I wanted to understand the mechanics behind the curtain.
In business, it meant stepping into rooms I wasn’t “qualified” for yet, not to prove something, but to see what was around the next bend.
The straight road never held my attention. The corner did.
Because when you reach a corner, you’re forced into presence.
You don’t know what’s around it.
And that uncertainty is both terrifying and alive.
Chasing corners isn’t about ambition.
It’s about curiosity.
It’s about recognizing that life isn’t a straight ascent; it’s a series of turns. And each turn asks you to release the last view before you’re shown the next one.
The Fisherman on the Beach
There’s a story I often think about.
A fisherman sits on a beach, catching just enough fish to feed himself and his family. He works in the morning, rests in the afternoon, plays with his children in the evening.
A businessman approaches him and says, “You’re wasting opportunity. If you worked harder, scaled this operation, bought more boats, hired people, expanded distribution… one day you could be very wealthy.”
The fisherman asks, “And then what?”
“Well,” the businessman says, “Then you could retire. Move somewhere quiet. Fish in the mornings. Spend afternoons with your family.”
The fisherman smiles. “That’s what I’m doing now.”
I don’t tell that story to dismiss ambition.
I tell it because it reveals something subtle:
We often project happiness into the future and call the projection “success.”
We tell ourselves:
“When I reach that summit, I’ll finally relax.”
“When I build that empire, I’ll finally live.”
But the present moment, the only place life has ever actually occurred, is quietly offering the experience we’re postponing.
The fisherman isn’t lazy.
He’s unattached.
The Fear We Manufacture
Here’s something I’ve noticed over the years.
When we get carried away with thoughts of the future, two things happen almost immediately:
We build fantasies.
We build fear.
The mind doesn’t just project achievement. It also projects disaster.
“What if I fail?”
“What if I lose everything?”
“What if this goes wrong?”
“What if I’m not enough?”
And none of it has happened.
We experience fear of what does not yet exist.
We suffer for scenarios that are entirely conceptual.
I’ve felt that in my body. Panic attacks in my twenties that felt life-threatening, even when nothing external was happening. The future, imagined vividly enough, can override the present.
But here’s what I’ve come to understand:
The present moment has never once contained that imagined catastrophe.
The present contains breath.
Temperature.
Gravity.
The next step.
The present offers exactly the experience we are meant to be having, not because the universe is scripting a fairy tale, but because this is simply what is here.
And if we are not clinging to what we wish were here instead, we can actually meet it.
Impermanence Is Not a Threat
On that mountain, watching the sun rise and cast a shadow of the peak across the valley, I felt something I can only describe as insignificance, but in the most liberating way possible.
I wasn’t the summit.
I wasn’t the story.
I wasn’t the identity I was building.
I was part of something vast.
Everything changes.
Every summit erodes.
Every body ages.
Every success fades.
Every failure dissolves.
Every thought passes.
Every emotion shifts.
Impermanence isn’t the problem.
Attachment is.
We cling to identity.
We cling to outcomes.
We cling to validation.
We cling to the version of life we think we deserve.
And when reality shifts, as it inevitably does, we call that suffering.
But what if suffering is simply resistance to change?
What if the work is not to hold tighter… but to release?
If life feels like you are being dragged behind a truck on a dirt road, let go of the rope.
Success, Revisited
What is success?
For me, freedom is part of it. Choice is part of it. Meaning is part of it.
But increasingly, I see success as this:
The ability to fully inhabit the moment you are in, without attachment to what it should be.
Not resignation.
Not apathy.
Not lack of ambition.
Presence.
If I’m on the mountain, I’m on the mountain.
If I’m carrying Mike, I’m carrying Mike.
If I’m sitting with my children, I’m sitting with my children.
If I’m in a boardroom, I’m in the boardroom.
Not mentally rehearsing the summit.
Not replaying yesterday.
Not fearing a hypothetical collapse.
Just here.
Because this moment is not a rehearsal for the future.
It is life.
And it is impermanent.
Which makes it sacred.
Two Hundred Meters Is Enough
Turning back two hundred meters from the summit didn’t feel like failure.
It felt like alignment.
It felt like recognizing that the experience itself had been enough.
The sunrise.
The cold.
The oxygen.
The effort.
The humility.
That was the gift.
Not the photo at the top.
And in letting go of the summit, I was given something I couldn’t have predicted:
The descent became the purpose.
Mike became the teacher.
Impermanence became the truth I couldn’t ignore.
And presence, not achievement, became the summit I continue to climb.
Every day.
Right here.
