The Go-Ahead Moment
When Plans, Pressure, and Life Finally Align
It happened again yesterday. That moment of great relief when you know your plans have the potential of being realized. The go-ahead moment. As always, it felt like a very heavy weight fell off my shoulders.
We—meaning my beloved daughters and I—are heading for the Tien Shan mountains this summer. A new expedition, a new film. I’ve been eagerly waiting for the project to move ahead for one and a half months now. As always, the big questions have been whether the project will get financial support and human backing—the two essentials for making ideas come true. This time I have a new producer and a new co-producer onboard.
Basically, we have some money and some structure in place. This is good enough to get going.
I really needed this break. As some of you might know, I certainly believe that aging is wonderful. It makes you overall worry less and enjoy the moment. Caring little about what others think of you. Life has taught me important lessons. Like the fact that the fewer things and attachments you have, the better off you are. And my goal is still to end up living a monk-like existence in the last part of my life. Hopefully with a partner of the same mind. When the kids have set off on their own life journey. Concentrating on spirituality and being of benefit to others. Still some distance to get there. Also meaning the tyranny of thoughts is still there—worries.
The most stressful times in my professional life come during the post-production of a film I’ve been working on for years. A film I know has great potential and can make a difference to many. Right now, I’m referring to the cycling film with the girls. A production that involves a lot of people, who you hire to make the film you want. I’ve invested a lot of my own money, time, and resources in the making of this film because I believe in it. It should have been ready now, but it isn’t. We are at least six months late, which is not uncommon, but adds to all the pressure.
Again, I’m a player in a big waiting game.
The same applies to another project, the house up in Lima. What will happen? Yet another time of waiting to see what happens.
On top of this, there’s your personal life. My woman lives in another part of the world and time zone. This is a challenge and adds to all the other pressures. And as a parent, this time of year means the girls are ending their school year. In Eva’s case, this means she has done her basic schooling and wants to continue her academic studies at the school of her choice. But this is also a waiting game. Will she get in or not? And as always, the pressure of her studies complicates her liver this time of year. Since she’s taking a lot of strong medication for her eye condition, times of stress raise her liver status to not good. Same this year. It will go away when school is over. Dana has her own pressures. She has to be the perfect girl everywhere—as a sister, daughter, student, friend, and football player.
Pressures!
I know this is what it’s like being a human being. At the end of the day, it will all sort itself out in one way or another. That said, yesterday’s go-ahead was a huge, momentary pressure relief for all of us!
This means that we can start training together. With passion! We’ve spent the last four weekends doing long walks with backpacks to prepare for the trip. We’ll do another one today. But until now without any real focus because of not knowing what will happen. Now we can start going through all the lists we’ve made of things we need to do and acquire. The girls are growing fast, so all their outdoor stuff has done its job. We can book the tickets, start planning properly what we actually want to do and where.
That moment of great relief finally arrived!
I’ve had plenty of these moments in my life. Smaller ones, like now, just to make you know a direction. Bigger ones that have been life-changing.
This current moment of relief reminded me of another significant turning point two years ago. The girls and I were sitting in a comfortable sofa at the Hilton Hotel in Kigali, Rwanda. Together with one of my best friends, Jeff Willner, a generous supporter of our adventures, and his son Max. Jeff had done his normal pitching for my journeys, which for some unknown reason had greatly interested Max, who had a lot of questions and dreamt about doing a big expedition. The girls and I had just arrived from Namibia, where we’d spent almost two months cycling. It had been a hard, demanding journey—so hard in fact, that I caught bronchitis and was pretty knocked out for a full month of cycling. Jeff had been of huge help throughout the trip in every way and invited us to come to Rwanda, where he had many projects in the making. It had been two hard years. I’d had a huge failure on the Greenland Icecap, where on the first day I made a mistake ending up with a difficult concussion. I had to be evacuated by helicopter and lost a huge sum of money. During the recovery phase, I had a stroke during a love holiday with Hannah in the Pyrenees. And sitting there on the sofa at Hilton Kigali, I had a big dark cloud over my head. That’s when Jeff said, “Why don’t you and Max cross the Greenland Icecap?”
From 10% battery power of life, in seconds it hit full charge! A huge relief! Since then, life has been very fortunate. But these moments of relief are needed!
Unfortunately, due to Max’s studies, it never happened. Which even today makes me sad. Such a nice young man, so full of life. Next time! When Max couldn’t come, I asked around for another partner, because unfortunately you cannot cross the Greenland Icecap by yourself. A very nice human being, adventurer, and friend, Meg said yes, but just three months before the start of the Expedition, she pulled out. I ended up doing a crossing with people I’d never met, in a way which was not mine, and not being able to make the film that was the plan—about who the people are who do these adventures?
Such is life. And it was a huge relief in many ways to reach the Western side of Greenland!
Here’s the 20-minute film.
