David White, MD
After years of skiing on our gently sloping backyard hill on what were excessively long, presumably antique skis that we had plucked from a yard sale, my brother Matt and I were finally going skiing on a real mountain. Not only that, we were renting real skis, with real boots (without need for bread bags on our feet for water proofing) and getting a lesson from a real pro (probably a seasonally employed high school student).
The lesson took place on the lower quarter of what to us appeared to be a magnificently tall and steep hill. There was no lift for this hill, so part of our lesson was learning to side-step our way up the hill. No problem, we had been doing that for years in our backyard. We assumed that there was to be hard, sweat-inducing labor preceding the thrill of racing back down the hill. But on this day, and on this particular hill, rather than having to feverishly dig our poles into the ground at a wildly escalating pace to ensure we hit our hand packed jump at top-speed, all we had to do was point the tips down, tuck and go. This was freedom!
The instructor bored us with impractical advice having to do with things such as slowing, turning and stopping. Our minds, however, were fixed on the top of our lesson-hill. As soon as the lesson ended, we side-stepped our way to the summit. Then discarding all techniques that increased friction, we raced to the bottom, wind-tears streaming from our eyes. We repeated the cycle of climbing and racing, over and over and over. It was later, after arriving back at home, that our satisfaction was turned to disappointment when we realized that the “admission tickets” hanging from our jacket zippers were actually tickets that granted us access to lifts that would have carried us to wonders unknown.
We had been lulled into accepting that our tiny hill was our best experience. Only later when we did actually experience the thrill of steep slopes, big jumps, wooded paths and vast spaces did we fully appreciate that in our ignorance we were, as C.S. Lewis once said, “far too easily pleased.” It was then too that we first appreciated that our instructor’s efforts to teach us skills to slow, turn, and stop where not hindrances, but the very means of ensuring freedom, safety, and joy when we transitioned to the mountain.
Author Marcel Proust wrote, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” One of my greatest joys as a physician is giving sight to the blind. Not literally, of course, but rather awakening in people an accurate view of themselves, their unique potential in life, and the beauty and wonder of the world around them. Though I and the Aspire team are eager to support, teach, and encourage, what our patients ultimately do with that vision is up to them. Too many sit content on the hill. They are plagued by disbelief, complacency, fear, pride, or experiencing the discomfort of sacrifice and discipline as insurmountable suffering.
I asked a patient recently, “What would you do this week if you were immediately 100 lbs. lighter?” Her eyes widened and her expression turned serious. Then with a faintly visible rim of tears forming in her eyes, she smiled and said, “I’d play my son in a game of tennis – and I’d win.”
Go to the mountain my friend, go to the mountain.
