Biking Vietnam, The Courage to Fail

I met Rose when she convinced me to stay in one of the bungalows she owned. She convinced me before her glasses broke, but once they did I knew we would be friends. Covered head to toe in a burka and a floral shirt with a flowing pink skirt, her expression was cheeky. “Shit!” she cursed as the pieces fell into the grass. I happened to find one and, unable or unwilling to pronounce my name correctly, she said, “Thank you Anker Wat.” The next day when I asked if I could borrow a book from the collection of discarded ones in the corner of her office, she didn’t hesitate.

“Some people see no more in climbing mountains,” Walter Bonatti writes in the prologue of The Mountains of My Life, “than an escape from the harsh realities of modern times. This is not only uninformed, but unfair. I don’t deny that there can be an element of escapism in mountaineering but this should never overshadow its real essence, which is not escape but victory over your own human frailty.”

I read this in Malaysia a week after Max, George, Ewan and I ended our two months in Vietnam by climbing Mount Fansipan, the tallest mountain in Indochina. I sat in the shade of a palm tree as two monkeys pillaged the coconuts above, remembering the small trek we had just completed.

Coming off that mountain, and for the first time in my life, I knew how it felt to be truly proud of something I’d done. Not necessarily in the hike, but in all the days, and all the months and all the friendships leading up to it. I’ve realized that it’s the things you’re most afraid to do that allow you to become the type of person you want to be.

Just yesterday, through the sterile aisle of a supermarket, Max helped me get some last minute things for my next trip. That’s when I confided in him that I was afraid to go. He told me fear’s a good thing. He said fear means you’re doing something that’s important to you.

Travelling to me isn’t about climbing a tall mountain so that I can say I did it. It’s not about the perfect picture of me driving my motorbike off into the sunset. (These, of course, are the perks.) But travelling to me is about overcoming my greatest weakness, which is self-doubt. Sitting on the summit of Fansipan with a beer in my hand surrounded by three people I’ve grown to love so sincerely was worth the going up. It was one small victory in a long line of others over all the limitations I had set for myself.

As Max and George high fived my hands through the window of the airport bus, I realized the weaknesses I’d overcome and the new confidence that serves as my sole companion on this upcoming journey. Now all those people—Rose and Max and George and Ewan-- are elsewhere in this world, and still, I don’t consider myself alone.
I am with myself.

Of all that nature has revealed to me throughout these months-- sleeping under her torrential weeping, seeing the sky of a different night, the moon from a different angle-- the lesson that had the greatest effect on me was not the realization that really I am nothing. But that I should make the most of it.

So I’m writing from a plane that’s landing in Australia’s Gold Coast because for two years I’ve talked about becoming a cowgirl, and there’s cowgirl work in the Land Down Under. I didn’t think I would ever actually do it because somewhere lurking inside me was something present and barely visible and solemn, and it was fear.

In the same way the perfect words can line themselves up at the perfect time in someone’s life, the book Rose lent me voiced truths I hadn't myself put words to: “Fear has many aspects and facing it demands self-control. For me, it has often proved a spur to courage, including, if necessary, the courage to accept failure. ”

If I’d set out to feel this way and complete these tasks, I’m not sure I would have had the confidence to do it. But I had the confidence to buy the ticket and sit on the plane. That plane took me to so many places I didn't know I was going and it showed me the importance in having courage-- the courage, if necessary, to accept failure, but the bravery to try anyway.