The journey.

This is me, beginning a “journey of a thousand miles with a single step” — literally, figuratively, and philosophically. I was 34, setting off on a journey through the Indian Himalayas.  

Before marriage and motherhood, I was either over-working or over-adventuring. If I wasn’t working,  I made sure to explore the world and seek out new adventures. My personal mantra of “curiosity is my currency, learning is my lifeblood”, has been a constant throughout my life and has driven my love for adventure, my desire to learn new things, and my motivation to make positive change.

For this particular trip, I joined up with a cadre of strangers - fellow adventurers that all came together for the same purpose – to encounter new cultures, to breathe fresh mountain air, to understand our place in this world beneath the awe-inspiring mountains, and to experience a small glimpse of what it would be like to live at 17,000 ft.

We started in the Pindari River Valley in a town called Dhakuri and made our way to “zero point” then out through Supi. The Himalayas stretch a length of 1400 miles beginning in Pakistan, continuing on through India, then into Nepal.  Most people think of Everest when they envision the Himalayas but, in my humble opinion, this stretch of Himalayas in India with its up close views of Nanda Devi, Nanda Kot, and Changuch, literally takes one’s breath away.

It is at zero-point where the trail ends and those magnificent mountains rise upwards. It is at zero-point, at 17,000 ft of thin cold air where we met Babaji, a spiritual seeker who has lived there solo since 1989. In the winter when the temperatures drop to minus fifty he survives in his cabin buried under the snow via an airpipe and he cannot use gases or fuels because it is too cold for them to ignite.  When he was only fourteen years old, he felt a calling to be right there in this spiritual place, guarded by the sacred mountains and has been there ever since. Each day he prays to the Goddess Nanda Devi for her protection and guidance beneath the massive strength of these inspiring mountains.

It was at zero-point where I too was moved by the power of these mountains. I felt it deep in my bones (and the cold on the tip of my nose!). And while a “calling” did not come to me in the same way it came to Babaji, I did know in that moment that, in all my smallness, my life was big and it was all my own. I knew that my life could be whatever I made it to be, that I could choose to grow big like the mountains, or stay small in the valleys. That I could go it alone or bring others along on my journey and, together, we could make change in the tiniest or biggest of ways. I had a deep knowing that the fullness and breadth of my learnings and life experiences would one day come together in a way that would make sense and that my path was, in fact, my very own. I didn’t need to follow a prescribed path. I was my own pilot in this non-linear and marvelous journey.  

Fast forward a couple years later after zero point and I got married and became a mother. A whirlwind couple of years that were an important and profound part of my learning journey. While the famous Chinese Philosopher, Lao Tze is responsible for the phrase “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” I am pretty sure if he hadn’t coined this phrase, then it would have come from a mother. For, it is in that delivery room, that a new journey begins. 

Little do we know when we launch into the journey of motherhood that we will be starting a new adventure, one that may not be as “interesting” as trekking through the Indian Himalayas or other kinds of geographic and cultural adventures, but a journey full of breathless moments and cultural discovery in its own right —an opportunity to experience life at its highest peaks and lowest valleys. In becoming a mother, our place in this world becomes firmly planted, grounded by the heartbeat of another.

So firmly, in fact, that sometimes, when we are deep in motherhood,  we begin to forget all that we are outside of motherhood and all of life’s experiences that brought us to this season of life; the things that made us who we are as an individual, the adventures and learnings that inhabit who we have become. We push our own dreams aside for others. We give away all of ourselves to others at the expense of our own identity.

Yes, being a mother is the greatest gift. My girls are a gift whom I’ll love and cherish forever. But, as mothers, we must also never forget that we too are a gift.  In today’s society that demands and expects so much from mothers, we can become so “all-in” that we lose our individual identities, the life experiences and learnings that have made us interesting and unique. Our real value is not in the diapering, feeding, homework helping, cleaner of messes, and in being family CEO. Our real value is in the fullness of who we are, the journey of how we got here, and the life stories and experiences that we get to bring to the table -for our kids, our families, our friends, and colleagues.

So let’s bring forward our real value. Bring forward the parts of us that are interesting.

Bring forward the parts of you that make you want to goofy dance because you are so inspired by your purpose, your thing, your happy place. Bring forward the real you that might be hibernating, waiting for the right time —a time when “things slow down” (note: they never will).  Life is too fleeting to wait. You are interesting. You are meant to do great things. You are valuable.

We get just one life and it is indeed a journey. What we do with the learning along the path of that journey is how we get to be remarkable to ourselves and to others. So, find and visit your zero-point where the mountains rise upwards to the clouds and where your whole being becomes immersed in their power, and know your value.

This is our/your journey, this is our/your step, this is our/your thousand miles.