My Second Mountain

moral life from the well-known text of David Brooks to dolphins and turtles

If you have been into coaching or self-development or other related trends, you probably heard the sentence “find your purpose” or “live with purpose“. Even without this, I would say that everyone I have met in my life wanted a life with meaning. Whatever this could be. In some cases, what we call meaning is simply a series of inherited social constructs as local religion, local cultures, and family habits. Sometimes it is the result of difficult circumstances.

Indeed, famous examples like Viktor Frankl [1], who survived Nazi concentration camps during World War II, iterate on psychotherapeutic methods identifying a purpose in life to be positive even in the worst ever circumstances. Nietzsche said

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” [2]

However, as argued by Scott Barry Kaufman in Transcend [3], even Hitler had a purpose, and he was very serious about it. So, defining just a purpose not necessarily is “good” for us and other members of our society. Moreover, as someone pointed out to me not so many years ago “being sane in an insane context is insane“. Which means that sometimes, it is better don’t push too much, give up, and pivot or change our purpose. Especially when we are fighting circumstances which do not make sense anymore, as a very toxic work environment, life during a pandemic, etc.

Why am I listing all those contradictory points of view? To summarize that there is no Plug'n'Play philosophy, and probably it is a topic larger than us, or at least than me. If you want to focus more on this I recommend to start from Aristoteles with the Nicomachean Ethics or Scott Barry Kaufman for example. You are not going to solve it in 5 minutes.

Instead, here I want only to focus on one only aspect, which not necessarily apply to everybody but it is the starting point of my further investigations. Apart from writing, I also read. I read recently a book with less expectations called “The second mountain“ which shocked me a bit, as it opened my eyes on the puzzle I was already putting together. So, let’s start from there.

In the movie Doctor Strange, the main character is an arrogant surgeon. After having his hands seriously damaged by a terrible car accident, he is not able to perform surgery anymore, until he discovers sorcery. In his journey to learn magic, his mentor before dying gives him this wise advice:

“It’s not about you.”

At this point in the movie, Stephen Strange must choose. He can either use his novel abilities to save the world or forget about others and use magic to heal his hands so he can be back to his prestigious life as a surgeon. Both is not possible. Fortunately, he does not decide on his own interest.

I have seen this movie and enjoyed it as a nice novel, and I have seen the “it is not about you“ as a poetic line in the Marvel cinematic universe. Until, I read the “The second mountain“ of David Brooks [4] which ringed several bells, and I finally I got the point, as people go through a journey on two mountains:

“… They got out of school, began their career or started a family, and identified the mountain they thought they were meant to climb: I’m going to be a cop, a doctor, an entrepreneur, … People climbing that first mountain spend a lot of time thinking about reputation management… Some people get to the top of that first mountain, taste success, and find it…unsatisfying. “Is this all there is?” they wonder. … Other people get knocked off that mountain by some failure. Something happens to their career, their family, or their reputation. … something unexpected happens that knocks them crossways: the death of a child, a cancer scare, a struggle with addiction, some life-altering tragedy that was not part of the original plan. Whatever the cause, these people are no longer on the mountain. They are down in the valley of bewilderment or suffering. … People in the valley have been broken open. … Their lives become smaller and lonelier. … But for others, this valley is the making of them. The season of suffering interrupts the superficial flow of everyday life. They see deeper into themselves and realize that down in the substrate, flowing from all the tender places, there is a fundamental ability to care, a yearning to transcend the self and care for others…”

Substantially, the first mountain is the top of success or what we just call normal life, the valley is where we end up after a serious failure/tragedy, the second mountain is where we act according to the “it is not about you“ mantra. Obviously, it is a growth journey, it takes some strengths and some realizations. Moreover, climbing the second mountain is not really climbing, it is more a giving up. Accepting you are not going to be as great as you thought, and better focus on what use we can do with our skills.

For the first part of my life, I have been, or tried to be, a scientist, and ended up because of science in Ghana. As a result, I moved into social development. I studied things like health economy, humanitarian management, and so on. An initial project I carried out there was relatively a success in Ghana. People are still talking about it. That was my first mountain, seen as a superhero. Unfortunately, a series of events brought me down to the valley. From superhero to a man traumatized and torn by personal tragedies. A relationship with someone important, and the impossibility to have a child with this person. Some kind of trauma related to other adventures, etc.

Slowly, I restarted. New job, new city, new stories. Things were shaping up again. Or at least this is what I thought. I even tried what I thought was the best thing ever I could do in my life: Being a social entrepreneur, then the COVID19 pandemic came, with the intense shutting down and economic contraction we are still recovering from. Putting it mildly, we had to close the startup which was the dream of my life.

This shuttered completely the last piece of ego I had left. I am a failure, it has now been confirmed 3 times at least. Ready to give up from any accolade, relationship, and so on, I was ready to start living simply in the valley at the bottom of the mountain. Which in my case is a group of islands with nature, dolphins, and turtles. In this place I could live growing vegetables, subletting to tourists my place and so on. Simply living, which I might follow at some point anyway.

Interestingly, instead, I ended up somewhere else without dolphins and turtles, where I can be a mentor for others. It doesn’t matter whether I will save the world anymore, or I will be on the top of the mountain. The focus is now on mentoring others. Even if it seems less heroic than the first part of my life, that superman period was about me. Now, “it is not about me“. It is about them.

You don’t need to go through a traumatic journey like the one I just described or, Dr. Strange with destroyed hands nerves. It can simply be a path of realization. Society is plagued by widespread selfishness, which is making us all lonely and ultimately unhappy. Individualism is prevalent. It is the Instagram society. Even if there are some negative aspects from the religious community, constrains from family structures, imperfect laws in a country. Focusing on a community and not us is what makes us great. As an ancient African proverb says “It takes a village to make a child”.

If you are looking for more scientific thoughts on this. Take a look at my old TEDx talk

REFERNCES

[1] Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s search for meaning. Simon and Schuster, 1985.

[2] Nietzsche, Friedrich, and Oscar Levy. The twilight of the idols. Allen & Unwin, 1909.

[3] Kaufman, Scott Barry. Transcend: The new science of self-actualization. Penguin, 2021.

[4] Brooks, David. The second mountain: The quest for a moral life. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2020.

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