What the Summit Means (2020)
Three years ago, I spent my 20th birthday at the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro with my sister and two friends. I did this — and I say this entirely seriously — mostly to get away from having to celebrate my birthday.
Ever since my overrated 16th birthday which was over the top, very fancy, a lot of fun and yet felt kind of pointless, I have seen my birthdays as a harbinger of unwarranted ho-ha and excitement I cannot match. It is better I think for all intents and purposes, to let the day pass unacknowledged beyond using it as an excuse to catch up with friends who are otherwise running around busy with life. So when I dilly-dallied on deciding if I wanted to join my sister on the trip, she suggested that being on a summit with no cell reception in a country where we don’t know anyone might be the most effective solution to my apathy. It was hard to argue with and so I decided that sure, I’d go.
If that sounds casual — it really was. My parents of course were shocked — I hadn’t “trained” at all. I felt okay because most of the training I saw online suggested walking slowly on the treadmill with a backpack, which felt like training that I gotten just by being a human who can’t ride a bicycle on Stanford’s enormous campus. This rationale — though ironclad to me — didn’t entirely convince the parents, and neither did my general ambivalence about the decision. But somehow, probably because of my sister and her eternal optimism in my ability to do things and her ability to make plans happen, my tickets were booked, my equipement was bought, and we were on our way.
It was a week like no other — each day it felt like we were passing through a completely different ecosystem. Dense rainforest first, what looked like a volcanic wasteland next, icy rocks on our last day. I remember most vividly waking up in the middle of the night in the tiny tent I was sharing with my sister and realising with increasing dread that I had to pee. I honestly would have much prefered to pee my pants rather than sit up in that miniscule place, put on my layers in that position while trying (and failing) to not wake up my sister, and then stepping out in pitch darkness and howling winds to approach the hole in the ground (made fancy by a rickety portable bathroom on top) to pee in — again, in darkness, with all the accompanied problems of aforementioned layers. Eventually, I did decide to go out to pee — mostly because I was so tired that I just wanted to get back to sleep — and when I stumbled out of the tent, I remember accidentally looking up and almost falling over backwards. The sky was so enormous — it felt like you could see everything in the universe all at once. It felt like suddenly realising you could fall into the sky and you’d fall forever because there is a whole world there — that your grip on gravity is so negligible.
I could probably write chapters on each day — the cool (and ancient with a capital A) plants we saw, the eccentric people we met as we climbed, the songs we played and sang along to as we walked, our amazing guides (who actually helped me blow my nose in the most tender and strange moment of the trip when we were climbing at 2am and my gloved hands were too frozen for me to do anything) — but I mostly want to write about what that summit meant to me.
The reason is that I think more than anything, that’s the most important thing I learnt on the trip. This essay would probably be very different if I had written it before going on the trip, or right after. But I wrote it now, after all this time, because I realised I’d never crystallised for myself what I learnt on that climb.
It is not, was not and will never be, my most significant achievement or proudest moment — that’s simply not the way my priorities are wired. Honestly, I mostly reached the top and waited in earnest for the helicopter I thought was going to airlift us down. Upon realising the helicopter we signed for was only in the case of medical emergencies and that I had grossly misunderstood the plan for the day, I browned-out (the milder cousin of the “blackout”) for the climb down the mountain because I was too exhausted to be exhausted.
But for me, that inner monologue I kept up as we climbed the last day — the hardest day — before the sun was up, absolutely freezing on maybe 2–3 hours of sleep — is what I keep with me to this day.
I started the monologue mostly to keep myself occupied. I felt like if I thought about what we were doing, and how much my feet hurt and how cold I was, how little I’d slept — then I’d never make it. And if I was bored — that was worse than being tired because when I’m bored is when I’m most aware of how tired I am and how many ways out of the tiredness (e.g: giving up) there are. And honestly, I do this all the time. When I can’t sleep, when I’m doing any mundane task, when I’m waiting for my phone to charge because it just died. I can go a whole car ride in silence and not even realise it because my internal monologue was so engaging that I forgot to speak out loud to the person next to me.
But quickly, this internal monologue became from a distraction to a necessity: because it became the reason I didn’t give up. It became my motivation, the impetus to keep going. Because here’s what the experience was for me: the simple and impossible decision to take the next step.
I could have, hypothetically, stopped at any point. I could have sat down and said I’d like that medical evacuation, and if I don’t get it I’m going to pass out to ensure I do. I could have said hey, this sounds like a solid plan, but I’m going to wait at the base camp while you guys embark on this ridiculous climb in the middle of the night. I could have said 90% up the mountain is just as good as 100% the mountain — and what I miss, I can catch in photos. I could have, and I cannot stress how easy this would have been, cried — and waited for someone to suggest that maybe I should go back down the mountain, like we saw multiple people do as we climbed up. I could have, like the shirt I would prize for long after the trip, said, ‘drank a Kilimanjaro Beer’ and said with a shrug, if you can’t climb it, drink it. All of those things would have been super easy, although colossally embarrassing, outs from a decidedly impossible situation. And honestly, once someone sees you blowing your nose into a tissue held by a guide like a baby in a million layers, there’s not much pride left to lose.
Here’s a little bit of context: although I’m the middle child in a family of three girls, because my younger sister is 10 years younger than me, I essentially grew up as the baby of the family. I grew up being coddled, being pampered, and though not because I am a girl, with the soft bigotry of low expectations. Or — to be more fair — what I perceived as low expectations. It’s a weird thing to describe because it was always blatantly clear in our household that anything less than the best was non-obvious. To explain: it was not that our parents ever told us to be the best, to compete hard, to strive strive strive. It was more that if we ever got less than an A+, didn’t go the extra mile for a project, didn’t do our best, it confused them. The underlying ethos was — why wouldn’t you try your hardest? It was non-obvious that you’d want to be anything but the best you could be.
But still — that soft bigotry. What I perceived as low expectations for myself. What I mean basically, is that I have a personality that is generally laid back — or to put it less kindly to myself, essentially lazy. Which honestly, I’m mostly fine with. As I said — that’s not how my priorities are wired. I just don’t get the same drive that some people have about physical milestones and achievements — which is why for me, climbing Kilimanjaro was also not monumental. It was a thing we did. I’m someone who likes to sit, I feel like when my body is stationary is when my mind works, and I like working my mind. I’m someone who needs to sleep for ten hours — and could sleep for 24 with happiness if given the opportunity.
So the soft bigotry — the low expectations — they came from a general acceptance of these things I myself admitted to, accepted, made my peace with. It was saying, from the voices who wanted to give me a break, it’s okay for that thing to not be your thing.
But the internal monologue that kept me going on the mountain, that pushed me to take each next step was a direct dialogue with the people that love me the most. The people who said, joking, kindly, lovingly — why is Rhea going? How will Rhea do this? It’s one thing that Yeshoda is going, but why take Rhea along? It was the people who heard I was going on this trip and honestly were confused — why would I do this.
And my internal monologue was me explaining to them why. It’s because I believe, have always believed — that if you put your time and energy into something, if you really care about it, you can do it.
It is, admittedly, a bit delusional. But it is a delusion that is useful, and one I haven’t been able to shake and one I haven’t tried very hard to shake either. I have so many faults — I know that, and I’m fine with it — because I know I will change if I have to. I know that nothing that I see as my deficiency has to be permanent if I don’t want it to be permanent. If I really cared.
My internal monologue was saying to them all, all the faces I love, that I was frankly, irritated. I was irritated that they thought I couldn’t do this. That they didn’t see in me that sliver of steel, never caught that accidental glint from something hard in a person, something that makes you see that the softest, fluffiest, most laid back person has something in them that is immovable. That when push comes to shove, something shifts. It irritated me that in their affection, they made me feel like maybe I didn’t have that, maybe they didn’t see that in me, maybe I shouldn’t see it in myself.
But here’s the thing about love that is easier to say about others than yourself: that in love, we are always discovering the person. We are always learning and relearning them as they shift underneath our fingers, as they grow and contract. And my internal monologue was this: that this was me shifting — not permanently, I’m not a climber now by any measure — but that in finding a part of myself that was able to do this, I was expanding the bounds of what I contain and confirming that I can do that.
It is a small victory, but an important one. And it is important not as a victory against someone, but as a victory for myself. As validation that there are still parts of myself that I can discover. I’ve always been so afraid of remaining who I thought I was — of always having the same flaws, of making the same mistakes over and over again, of being so predictable that people could say “Rhea? Oh, she could never do that.” I was afraid that they would be right.
I was so afraid that who I was was set in stone before I got any real say in it. That accepting your flaws is the same thing as settling into them, that loving yourself meant an end to introspection and growth.
So I guess that’s what I mean by the bigotry of low expectations — that it is those who want to protect us, who see our flaws and accept them, that can sometimes in their confidence in knowing us be unable to see that we can become something new. And that it is important to know that we can always, always become a little bit new. That we can discover more of ourselves should we choose to.
We go our whole lives being so afraid of being found out, for being inadequate, for being just how much we are (which is never quite enough). And sometimes we get an opportunity, and even if it’s just through bravado, even if it means nothing, even when it doesn’t move any big needle — to rewrite those limits.
When I think of what that summit means — that’s what I think of. I think of myself, sitting on a rock and too tired to take more pictures, finishing that internal monologue with silence. With knowing that there is nothing more to say because each step had said something that words maybe can’t: that look at this new horizon, this wide expanse, that is now a part of who I am.
