Himalaya Odyssey (4/6)

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The Practice of Not Thinking

3 AM. Altitude: over 4,000 meters. Oxygen is thin, and the temperature has plummeted below freezing. I focus every nerve solely on lifting my next foot.

A quote by figure skater Yuna Kim, which I stumbled upon before leaving, buzzes in my head like a mantra.

“What is there to think about? You just do it.”

The moment a thought finds a crack to enter, fear takes root.
It’s hard. It’s cold. When will this end?
To block out this noise, I fix my gaze on the ground. The patch of dirt illuminated by my headlamp, just one step ahead. In that moment, that is the extent of my world.

The guide insisted on this cold, dark early start. We have no choice but to trust his experience. Following the heels of the person in front, I silently take the next step.

When dawn breaks

Hours pass. We cross the critical point where it feels like breath might stop. Dawn breaks. The darkness lifts, and the contours of the world slowly reveal themselves. We stop for a moment and look back at the path we traveled.

“ ......! ”

Neither my father nor I can speak. The scene unfolding behind us is beyond overwhelming; it is bordering on terror. A narrow, steep cliff edge where a single misstep would mean falling kilometers into the abyss. The path we walked could hardly be called a “road.”

Far away, along the ridges of peaks that must be 4,000 meters high*, I can see our starting point. The endlessly long and treacherous path comes into view all at once.

‘We walked all that way? Past those sheer cliffs, covering that unimaginable distance?’

In a sober mind, under the bright light of day, had we seen the path beforehand, we never would have dared to attempt it. Overwhelmed by the sheer scale, we likely would have given up before even starting.

Only then do I understand why the guide woke us at 2 AM without a word. ‘If we had seen this path from the start, we would have been too scared to climb.’ ‘The darkness might be his strategy—to block that fear and force us to look only at our toes.’

The Small Oil Lamp

In that moment, a verse from the Bible pierces my heart.
‘Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.’

Until now, I imagined this ‘lamp’ as a blazing torch.
Assuming it meant ‘God’s power is great.’ A powerful light that clearly illuminates the path of my life ahead.

So I always prayed:

“Lord, what happens next? Please tell me. If I know, I won’t be anxious.”

But that ‘lamp’ was not a torch. It was not a modern searchlight. It was a tiny, dim oil lamp. A weak light that illuminates only the few steps right in front of my feet.

Why does He not show us the future?

Why does He keep us in pitch-black ignorance?

If we saw the full extent of the hardships required to finish the race, If we saw the sheer cliffs where one misstep could be fatal, We would be terrified and run away. We would collapse and give up.

Perhaps He knows our frailty.

To Him, the darkness is not abandonment; it might be the deepest mercy.
It is a love that shows us only one inch ahead, saying, “Just walk this much.”

The path of a startup, and the path of my life, must be the same.
This vagueness, not knowing what will happen tomorrow, might actually be His safety mechanism that keeps me from giving up.

I adjust my backpack. The summit is still invisible, but I am no longer afraid of the darkness wrapping around me.

(End of Part 4. To be continued in Part 5)

• Author’s Note: In the Himalayas, there are so many 4,000-meter peaks that many of them are considered mere “hills” and remain unnamed.

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