This will be the second time I posted a insert from the current book I am reading. I previously posted a couple paragraphs from the book Eat, Pray, Love, which spoke about New York City being the city most full of love. I have moved on to yet another Penguin Publishing Book, Three Cups of Tea. I don’t usually favor Penguin Books but I had this book laying around so I thought why not. So far, its quite inspirational and surprisingly humorous at times. It details the story of Greg Mortenson and his quest to build schools high up in the mountains of Pakistan, where some of the world’s most impoverished villages exist.
The paragraph that I felt most related to travel and how we as travelers connect with our experiences, came at the very beginning of the book. It recalls a moment during Mortenson’s attempt at climning K2, the second highest peak in the world, and the highest peak in the Karakoram Range. This specific moment came after he made the realization that he had failed at summitting the peak and due to exhaustion, he was about to head back down the mountain. It reads as follows:
Though Mortenson had already been there for months, he drank in the drama of these peaks like he’d never seen them before. “In a way, I never had,” he explains. “All summer, I’d looked at these mountains as goals, totally focused on the biggest one, K2. I’d thought about their elevation and the technical challenges they presented to me as a climber. But that morning,” he says, “for the first time, I simply saw them. It was overwhelming.”
I think we all know the moral of this paragraph and can think back to a time when we were in the presence of something great but may not have seen it, like truly seen it. Having goals are what keeps us going and its always nice to have a plan. However, sometimes its in your best interest to just let go of your objectives and just see what is right in front of you.
Mortenson, Greg, and David Oliver Relin. Three Cups of Tea. New York: Viking Penguin, 2006. Pages 18-19
