We all have our journey. The toughest one is no doubt life, where we take centrestage, where we are judged by our performance.
In Life section of ST, adventurer Ash Dykes, 29, shares his journey of trekking the entire length of China’s Yangtze River. It is has been made into a two-part documentary that airs tonight at 9 pm on National Geographic.
This journey is daunting. It took Ash 353 days to complete a distance of 6,437km last year. It was a Guinness World Record feat no less.
Ash said: “The river cuts through immense diversity - it would take me through 11 provinces, show me both the wild and urban sides of China, and lots of traditions, cultures, dialects, wildlife and weather systems along the way.”
Ash shared that it took him and his team two years to plan the route. The logistics was equally daunting, and the intense preparation was essential due to the political sensitivity.
He said: “The source of the Yangtze is close to Tibet and you need special permits that are difficult even for locals to get.”
“Then one has to contend with landslides, bears, wolves and the altitude, which is about the same height as Mount Everest base camp, so just over 5,400m.”
He added: “In winter, it can drop to minus 40 deg C and you get blizzards. And it’s just so wild.”
Ash said that what he had learned is perseverance. And it was perseverance in the smallest task, even the most mundance ones. And this is how he broke them down.
“On day one, when I had so many struggles even getting there and I still had 352 days left, it was important not to look at the end goal and let that overwhelm me, but to focus on breaking it down into lots of little sections to make it more achievable and make sure I’m managing my expectations.”
That is the avalanche of a life plunging all at once on us - turning a daunting moment into a lifetime’s burden.
I recall a friend who once told me that when you climb a mountain, there is no point looking either up or down. When there is still a long way to go, and when you have come so far up, he said just focus on every grip you have on the rocks.
Look for the crevices for support. Focus on how to scale each small step that takes you forward. It is the daily task that adds up. They are the anonymous (seemingly inconsequential) steps that bring you up to the summit.
I also recall a saying that God is gracious with us by creating time. One that is spread out over a lifetime. Each second carries a moment and no more. And each minute carries sixty of those moments.
Our life is thus not designed to pack every pain, sorrow, shock or trial into one moment and turn that moment into a boulder we carry for a major part of our journey. When we make that happen, that moment becomes unforgettable, and it also becomes overwhelming.
Soon, it also becomes a dead weight, which sinks us deep like an anchor that drowns our resolve to move forward, and to savour what the other moments in life have in store for us.
And soon, it also becomes a point of reference, an emotional benchmark, where we see all things through it; thereby turning even hope into a dreaded dead end.
They say you take the color of your surrounding, and becomes the hue of the choice you make. That applies to a weighted moment too, where we compact it with the shock of a trauma or trial at that moment it happened. We too become that moment as it defines our present and discolourises our future.
Alas, one defining moment, especially the bad, and it controls all other moments in our life and make them either invisible or truly inconsequential.
So, I return to Ash, the adventurer, who practically took one step at a time to surmount the challenges he had to confront. His was the Yangtze River, the journey of great endurance and perseverance.
Ours may be an event that happened to us in the past or a sorrow that has stopped us in our track or trek. Such moment of pain or fear is never meant or designed to stop time. For in time, God has given us a lifetime to spread the event however daunting (or crushing) it may be.
Let the burden be shared (or spread) as we take each step affirming our healing and towards restoring our faith and hope in this journey that is given unto us for a season. That is, a season meant for overcoming, and a season meant for rejoicing as we finally reach the summit to savour the empowering view, including the view of what we had once overcome below, that is, those moments that once threatened to halt our journey, but we moved forward nevertheless, one moment at a time.
Indeed, at that vantage point, those moments become exceedingly small and truly inconsequential in the larger scheme of life itself.
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