Qomolangma is the Tibet name for Mt. Everest, the highest peak on the planet Earth. Every life needs a Qomolangma to scale; a goal, a purpose, an overriding passion to give full meaning to our existence. That mountain top can evolve and change over a lifetime; it can be specific or it can be a general direction but it does need to be or be in the birthing process.
My goal was always to “Live No Ordinary Life, to Live the Life Extraordinaire.” I wanted to avoid the mundane, the pedestrian. Now that leaves a lot of room for interpretation and that is fine. At a rather young age I looked around me and I saw all too many people living to the full extent of their incomes and then some. The moment they got an extra dollar, they upped their lifestyle to immediately consume it. Every promotion and pay raise instantly vanished into the maw of voracious consumption: cars, dinners, toys, vacations, entertainment. They were on an economic treadmill, their financial lives a house of (credit) cards that would collapse if they were to miss but one paycheck.
That struck me as rather precarious and a form of self-imposed indentured servitude. I decided true wealth was choices and that to have savings created options and freedom. I lived a very thrifty life as a student, working 2 part-time jobs while going full time to school (one was a 24 hours a week graveyard shift, the other was property management which allowed flexibility). I was happy as a student so when I graduated and got my first professional job, I resolved not to change my lifestyle and save the difference, a decision that has contributed in no small measure to the prosperity I currently enjoy.
But the real point is that I had a goal, a purpose, a Qomolangma to scale that tied into my deepest desires and motivated me to bound out of bed every morning full of vim, vigor, and vitality. My eye was always on the mountain top.
Closing Quotes:
“The meaning of life is not a question we ask of life but rather a question life asks of us.” – Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankel, physiologist, holocaust survivor
“To give anything less than your best is to waste the gift.” – Steve Prefontaine, 1951-1975, champion runner
“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” – Jim Rohn
“All who have accomplished great things have had a great aim, have fixed their gaze on a goal which was high, one which sometimes seemed impossible.” – Orison Swett Marden
“Everybody has their own Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.” – Seth Godin
As always, I share what I most want/need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier