Sex

Pretty much everything can be likened to sex. That's right. Sex. 

Imagine someone tells you all about their spirituality.  They make a conscious effort to let those around them that they are spiritual. They use every means available, including social media and even their t-shirts have a spiritual motto printed. You imagine that if you walk in on them in the bathroom they'd be levitating in Buddha pose over the toilet and their uber slow speech freaks you out a bit. But somehow when you're around them you don't feel so zen. You've witnessed them contradicting their hashtags and mantras live, and wonder whether you know what to be "connected" even means anymore. What do you make of them?

Not really sure?

How about if this person talks about money? How much they have, how successful they are. Forget that, they don't  even talk about themselves, but rather everything they discuss revolves around money, who's who, what's what, they put in a lot of effort to let you know who they know and how involved with the possession and materialism they are. Hmm...

What if this person isn't talking about money or spirituality, but something much more basic. Something we can all identify with: Sex.

You meet someone and all they talk about is sex. How much sex they've had or are having, all the people they know who have lots of sex, how great it is to have sex, and they spend significant effort to radiate sex appeal and make sure others are aware that they're sexually available.  Not confusing anymore is it? 

You should probably be thinking this person is not only a tool, but they probably don't get any. Because when you're getting what you're aiming for, when you're fulfilling your values, whatever they are, when you're actively building your ideal you, not only are you too busy to be telling people about it, you have no reason to. 

Money, Spirituality, Inspiration, Knowledge, Motivation, Success, Happiness, Love, Progress, etc. are all the same as sex. If you're talking about it all the time , you're not getting any. If you're having it, you don't have time to be talking about it. And better still, you don't feel the need to talk about it because you're probably around others who are getting some too, so they probably won't be very impressed.

So if you need a thousand motivational memes and a picture of yourself looking like your having fun when in fact you'd rather be doing something else, you're not fooling anyone, and eventually you won't even be able to fool yourself either. Like the song goes

"all the good times that I've wasted, having good times/ when I was drinking I should've been thinking/ when I was fighting/ I could've been doing the right thing.../ My useless talking I could've been walking/ Instead of complaining I could've been gaining"

Bottom line: stop talking, start acting. 

But beyond that, and in some ways even more importantly- stop surrounding yourself with people who only know how to talk. The company you keep is the ecological environment you grow in. If a sprout is surrounded by trees that block out the sun, it will have a slow growing process and its potential will be reached far later than it would in its ideal ecosystem, if at all. 

It's easy to say something like "surround yourself with people who help you grow". But that's some super idealistic bullshit. We will all come across assholes and for better or worse we will have to live with them, sometimes because doing so is part of the path to growth (for example, a shitty boss at your dream job).

The majority of people, I've found, are neither here nor there. They're not cheering your name from the sidelines, but they're not out to get you either. They probably don't care all that much about you altogether, and that's definitely not a bad thing. Being everything but the center of the universe is a fact that, once embraced, is invaluably humbling and grounding. It can help you accomplish more, determine your role in society, contribute to the future, and not give a fuck about trivial bullshit- a.k.a the art of being mentally sound.

The question is how to turn all those O.K. people who are neither here nor there, into your perfect ecosystem. The ones who cheer you on are obviously your heros, don't let go of them. The ones who throw shade are your fuel. Use their doubt as a challenge, prove them wrong and likewise proof to yourself that you CAN. But the grey zone people are a little trickier. 

We'll have to get back to them later I guess, because there's only so much inner monologue you can have while I watching the sunrise over milky white icebergs, fluffy mountain tops and the glacier hanging off in the distance. But that's what was on my mind anyway.

Sex. Sex was on my mind.

And all the people who are busy talking about something they want you to think they're getting.

We had woken up at around 8 which left us with plenty of time to watch sunrise, as Patagonian winter days become exceedingly short until around June and it was already mid-April. To say we "woke up" is sort of giving our REM cycle too much credit, since I had been up most of the night, knocking snow off of the roof our tent and simultaneously scaring off scuttling field mice. I had actually woken up in the middle of the night with the sense that a small and very cold child was sitting on my head. Our tent wasn't designed for winter, and so caved under the weight of the thick snow. When we opened up the tent flap we were greeted by a winter wonderland. I felt like I had stepped into Narnia. There were hardly any footprints at camp DeAgostini when we prepared our breakfast of oatmeal with raisins and cinnamon over the portable gas stove.

Washing our dishes with melted snow, we donned our layers and ran along the path like children on the first snow day of the season. It had been a long time since I actually enjoyed snow.

As an adult, you often just live around it, it's a beautiful hassle. 

The landscape held that greyish blue hue when the sun is rising somewhere else behind some mountain, and the moon is still high. We ran ecstaticly up the hill. A small army of photographers armed with tripods had left the camp before us, but we ran passed them like rascals and when we reached the viewpoint to Cerro Torre, suddenly it looked so much more serene and welcoming than it had the foggy afternoon before. We briskly made our way down to the shore. There want nothing to do but stand breathlessly thinking about the significance of thinking versus doing. Here I am, becoming. I decided to be a certain type of person and I took the necessary steps I believed would get me there. And while, naturally, there was action involved (I was trekking tens of kilometers with 10-15kg of weight on my back for several days after all), DOING what I believed in doing was something I had left in the dust behind me, in the places I came from. 

 Cerro Torre a day prior

I've always been more of a thinker. My imagination runs rampant with images and ideas basically around the clock, but I'd never been ace at making my ideas happen. I wondered why that is, and if I could be as ardent about the things I'd like to do, as I am about the person I actively work on becoming.  After staring at the mountains' reflection in the icy lake for time unmeasured, I determined that the problem lies in that.

Right there. Differentiating who you are from what you do.

Should you? Do we have to become the things we do, or is it mutually exclusive? And if we do become them, is that a bad thing?

I guess it shouldn't be, as long as you choose your actions wisely, right?

#patagonia #winter #camping #trekking #backpacking #solotravel #femaletravel #life