Career Seasons
A few months ago, I was telling a friend what an amazing experience it is to hike 14ers (mountain peaks over 14,000 feet tall), about the mental and physical struggle of the experience, being immersed in raw nature, and all of the analogies it has to life in general. To date, I had hiked exactly one 14er trail, twice, but was talking like a knowledgeable expert. So, my friend called my bluff, seized the day and said, “let’s go.” About a month later, we packed up and headed out west. We decided on Decalibron, a quad 14er loop hike in Colorado that includes Mounts Democrat, Cameron, Lincoln and Bross. I was excited and nervous but mostly excited. With all of the knock-downedness of 2020, I was really needing something to conquer. I prepared a little but figured I was in decent enough shape.
On the day of our big hike, we got up at 3:30am, and arrived at the trailhead by 4:45am with only the moon, stars, shadows of the mountains and hundreds of other hiker headlamps, shining like stars on the face of the mountain. The thought of failure never entered my mind. After we started out, I felt like I was needing to take a lot of breaks from the get go. But I knew it wasn’t supposed to be easy. We kept climbing, stopping every once in a while to observe the change in scenery and to catch our breath. After about an hour, we began to see the faint start of the sun coming up. What an amazing experience! It’s like a spotlight ever so slowly turning on, revealing some of nature’s most beautiful landscapes.
When reached the saddle (a low point between two peaks), it was windy and cold and I was exhausted. We continued up towards one peak and I was feeling a little lightheaded, my legs felt like jelly and I was pretty winded and very cold. I knew I was holding my two friends back, as they were both in much better condition at this point. So, I called it. I told them to go on and I would wait at the saddle for them. I sat there for probably an hour. Alone with my thoughts, looking at God’s beautiful scenery, feeling upset that I failed, wondering why I couldn’t do it, wondering if it was because I no longer had the grit and drive of my younger self, wondering what God was trying to teach me.
Then a woman walked up and said she had seen me sitting there for a while too. We light heartedly talked for a while, mostly about the day, about where we were coming from, about our friends that were currently doing a super bad-a thing and summiting a peak. I didn’t even know her name or what she did at this point. We were just passing the (cold!) time together. Then my friends came down after they had summited and had the sweet smile of success on their faces. I was so excited for them and simultaneously so disappointed that I didn’t have that feeling too.
At that point, my new friend and I had decided that we were done and we would descend together. Shortly thereafter, her friends came down from their first summit, ready for more. So, we told our respective friends good bye and assured them that we would stay together and look out for each other on the way down. The descent took a couple of hours and we talked about a wide variety topics. There is a special thing about being in the same abnormal space with someone I had just met that made me reflective and introspective, and prompted me to consider many things about life that I would otherwise take for granted in my ordinary day-to-day life.
It turns out she’s an engineer, too—an industrial engineer and just starting her career —so naturally the conversation turned to discussing phases of careers in this industry. She’s in the “prove yourself” phase, putting everything into her career and pushing full steam ahead. I saw my younger self in her: so excited about my job, so wanting to find my place and implement my knowledge from school and keep learning more, relishing in perfection, while being scared of failure and being unbalanced, too. Then we talked about the phase that I’m in, more of a “riding the wave” phase. I’ve been an engineer for 18 years, and have weathered mistakes and survived enough of them to not really be that afraid of failure anymore. Things are more balanced. I make time for friends and family and actually have hobbies again. In the past, I’ve probably pushed too hard at times. But I don’t regret it; the push got me to where I am at now. However, the hustle lifestyle is not sustainable forever. We talked about how we have to know that we are just in a season, and that the difficulties we currently face are temporary. Our seasons are different but both so very valid and our lessons learned are reciprocal.
We talked about how we both have outgoing personalities, so people are often surprised to learn that we are engineers. Case in point: we talked to most everyone we encountered on the way down and cheered them on on their way up, because that’s the comraderie of the mountain but also fitting of our personalities. When we got back to the trailhead, we realized our cars were parked next to each other. We took a picture together and exchanged names and numbers. We didn’t even know each other’s first name until our hike was done. But there was something about the anonymity that also made being vulnerable in our conversation a little easier. I hope we will keep in touch. I hope that I can mentor her and I hope that she will be willing to teach me some things too.
Back to my festering failure: yes, I had failed to summit, but as a recovering overachiever that has placed a majority of my worth in outside achievements, maybe it was necessary for me to realize that my worth isn’t tied to those but rather to just being the person that God created me to be. It’s always His plan that prevails over my own stubborn plans. In the weeks since, I realized that I took away very different lessons from the experience than I had intended. I succeeded in connecting with someone I would not have otherwise. I succeeded in taking time to stop and really take in nature. I succeeded in not pushing myself too hard and possibly hurting myself. So I guess maybe this experience more fully defines the season that I am in: just being, just bringing to the table what I have to offer, and cheering on my peers, offering my experience that I’ve gained from pushing hard in my past. Maybe, in this season of my life, it’s not about the summit but more about the hike and the connections that I make along it. The journey, not the destination.
As for my two friends, they summited all four peaks in one day. They are bad-a and I’m insanely proud of them and so happy that they got to experience that together. As for me, when my season changes, I will be immersing myself in the beauty of the of stars of the mountain and sky again.
