The fact the green Saudi flag was unfurled Wednesday on the summit of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain, is understandably a source of pride for all of us. The man who took it there, thirty-year old communications executive Farouk Saad Hamad Al-Zuman was the first Saudi to conquer Everest.
In our eyes, Al-Zuman’s achievement ranks with another notable Saudi first: the 1985 space flight of Prince Sultan bin Salman. Both these men displayed courage and grit in the face of great risks. Only six months after Sultan’s flight on the NASA space shuttle Discovery, its sister ship Challenger was lost with all crew just 73 seconds into its flight.
However beyond the pride that the achievements of these men engender, the deeds also say something about the wider human condition. The late Sir Edmund Hillary, first man to breach the summit of Everest (with Nepalese guide Tenzing Norgay only steps behind him), was inevitably asked time and again why he had chosen to climb the world’s highest peak. His laconic answer was: “Because it was there”. In reality, people such as climbers and explorers who often endure physical exhaustion, great pain and discomfort to say nothing of the constant risk of death or injury, embrace such hazards for a very important reason: They are seeking pre-eminent challenges. They choose to set themselves the task of overcoming often-immense odds and winning through.
Though their feats may often attract worldwide publicity, such individuals are often distinguished by their modesty. In testing themselves to the limit, they will often make many personal discoveries and find out the sort of men they really are. Those private revelations often add to the instinct to shy from the ballyhoo with which they are frequently welcomed home in triumph.
Despite this, whether they like it or not, they cannot avoid one extra achievement which they probably did not anticipate — that of inspiring so many other people by their outstanding examples. It is extremely unlikely that anyone reading Arab News today is also going to be climbing Everest or going into space, but all of us have been moved by these attainments. For many of us they can offer a whole new perspective on our day-to-day lives, when perhaps the most dangerous thing we will ever do is venture out onto the road system.
Life does not have to be humdrum and predictable. We can set ourselves new challenges, be it in working harder, winning promotion, saving for a better home or better car or even just getting ourselves back in shape. These are, of course, ambitions common to most everyone. But ambition by itself is never enough. To make them reality, the chosen challenge is do whatever it takes, in terms of discipline, focus and sheer determination to see the task through to success. The key, as Al-Zuman demonstrated last week, is to keep going and never give up. Only a relative few can attain the pinnacle of human achievement, but most of us have our own Everests to conquer.
