I have been asked one too many times as to what has prompted me first to attempt my journey towards the world’s highest mountain. I smiled knowingly but rarely gave away a true first impulse.
Today my reasoning would have featured my dad, GRIT&ROCK, mountains as cathedrals where I exercise my religion (copyright RIP Boukreev), my obsessive relationship with vertiginous place and an incredible tribe the alpinists are…
Some 6 years ago it was a conversation. At a cocktail party. With a partner of an institution I used to work for. To tell you the truth I don’t remember his name… I was introduced to this gentleman as someone who has started her alpinist journey and climbed Mont Blanc. It was an ice breaker. He was initiated in the craft. He has climbed the Matterhorn 🙂 He asked me a question: ‘What is your greatest aspiration?’. I blurted out: ‘The Everest’… Today I understand how I may have come across… back then I was taken aback by his answer. He looked me up and down and said; ‘You better start soon!’ One – i.e. a woman in her 30s – could have taken that as an insult. For me back then, it pushed a ‘I will prove you wrong’ button… a powerful one for the Pavlenko tribe (I see the lighting of that thunderstorm ever so often in the eyes of my Gordon-tribe son).
And so I went to do my homage to the 10,000 hours. I was lucky in that I have found patient and true friendships with extraordinary people who encouraged me to hone my technique, extend my range and yet did not point out that in my mid-30s I held no hope. They leveraged my inner sense of adventure and competitiveness to draw out the best in me, extended my endurance and got me to love the type 2 fun. They were (over?) generous with their praise and helped me to go beyond the point of pain to get better. They also suffered… from the same very obsessive desire to get better. Roland, an ex French mountain rescuer, nearly stormed out of my house once when I presented him with a print out of all the D/TD (difficult/very difficult) routes I wanted to do in the Chamonix valley.
I have rarely thought back to that conversation with a XX partner until I got into a different one with a female headhunter some 18 months ago. By then I moved to a portfolio career seeking board appointments. I had nearly two decades of market experience, I have been a managing director in one of the most respected Wall Street firms, I was a market athlete… And in the midst of a drive for ‘women on boards’ I was told… ‘you are too young to do this, go and have more kids so you can spend this time productively’… Hm… somehow that ‘too young’ comment was a lesser compliment.. That year, I went on to be elected as an independent non-executive board member to the board of one of the biggest mining companies in the world with the largest share of the vote supported by venerable US institutions.
And so it goes on in life… What are we at any point in time? Too old? Too young? Only you and the spirit you have have that answer…
Tomorrow I turn 42. I will be 7 times older than my son…. I am fitter than I have ever been. I dare to challenge a record, previously unimaginable to me. I am a North London mother of two. I am a friend. I am a board member and an arts and education enthusiast. I love life enormously and now, having lost friends and my dad appreciate the flitting nature of it that can’t be taken for granted.
Too old? Too young? Don’t ever let others make that conclusion for you…
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