Finding Your Personal Mount Everest

This is a piece I first wrote back in the early 1990s. I have revised it a few time since then – added some things, changed some wording – but the basic premise has stayed the same. I think my last revision was around 2009 or so. I remembered it as I was working on my new post about soul mates and soul friends, and I thought I would go ahead and post it.

Relationships! 

We spend so much time thinking about them, talking about them, laboring and anguishing over them, but we never seem any closer to understanding them.  With the possible exceptions of learning where socks disappear to from the clothes dryer or Michael Jackson’s planet of origin, there are few greater mysteries than romantic relationships. 

Why are we drawn to certain people, but repelled by others?  Why do we so often find that after a certain amount of time, we’re repelled by those same people to whom we were at first so drawn?  Why is that time shorter with some people than with others?  Why do we sometimes find ourselves drawn to people toward whom we should feel repelled? 

Why do we sometimes fall in love with people who don’t feel the same way, who don’t love us back?  And most important, is there any hope of finding someone who really will love us back and toward whom we won’t eventually feel repelled?  The answer, definitely, is Yes, which is good, because it means I can keep writing.

Every once in a very great while, each of us runs across someone who seems almost immediately to stand out from the crowd, a person who touches some special chord on the piano keys of your inner being, who may be just ordinary to the other 99.9999 percent of humanity, but is mysteriously extra special to you.  But it doesn’t happen often, and if this does seem to happen often for you, seek professional counseling. 

Why are these wonderful people so very hard to find, and why do even these seem to have a better than average chance of not working out in the long run?  Why are you still reading these pointless questions as though you’re going to find some profound answer? 

Perhaps it’s because the title has led you to believe this column has something to do with Mount Everest, which is said to have many wise gurus sitting on its peak, freezing their butts off while contemplating the mysterious nature of the universe and waiting for simpletons like us to climb up and avail themselves of that sage knowledge – all the while wishing they were sitting in a nice, warm Jacuzzi someplace getting deep, therapeutic back massages, instead of sitting cross-legged in a frigid, windy patch of snow. 

Of course, if someone chooses to sit out in a windy patch of snow, why would you want his advice on anything?  But enough deep questions!  Probably the only reason you’re continuing to read this drivel is because you’re hoping that somewhere along the line it involves sex.  Is this ultimately about sex?  Sorry, you’re just going to have to read on if you want to find out. 

Let’s get back to the point. 

I have come to realize that for each one of us – you, me, the guy at the gym whose biceps measurement doubles his IQ, your old aunt Edith who eventually decided to give up on men entirely and live alone with her 47 cats, even the crazy guy sitting in the snow on the mountain top – there are, at best, only a handful of people who will cross our paths in our entire lifetimes with whom all the required qualifications for a superbly deep and meaningful relationship exist.  In other words, for each of us, it really only “clicks” with just a few individuals – ever.

So, how many is a handful?  Well, how big is your hand?  I’m guessing that, if you’re really lucky, the most would be three or four.  But for the majority of us, it’s probably only two or three – and perhaps only ONE.  And that’s through an entire lifetime.  I believe too that a great many people stay too blind to find even one of their special handful, or if they do, they don’t realize it and allow them to pass on by.

Very often, we just think we’ve found one of that handful when what we’ve really got is just something a few ticks above ordinary.  Pretty bad odds, but that’s how it seems to be set up, because I’m not talking about really good, or even great; the kind of relationship we’re learning about today transcends even fantastic.  We’re talking about something spiritual here.

We hear a lot of talk about soul mates, and that’s probably what we’re talking about here too.  This is because finding and connecting with one of these handfuls of people, and then making it last, requires a sort of divine intervention, the focus of universal creative energy – God if you prefer – to get behind and give each of us a push in the right direction.  But even the best efforts of the Divine can be ruined or ignored by us humans, because once we come to Earth we tend to become really stupid.

Now, you’re probably saying to yourself, “wait a minute, that can’t be right; I’ve met lots of guys (or gals) with whom I really hit it off, and I’m sure there are a ton more just waiting for the chance to meet me.”   Sorry!  Wrong!  Please move to the back of the class.  What we’re talking about here is a whole different level of relating, a level that moves past the surface and gets deep inside of you, a level that is soul-based and unlike anything else you’ll ever experience.   

So what’s it all about?

In a relationship like this, the most important elements are there:  You find yourselves on the same page of your intellectual and emotional operating manuals, and your “view of the world” is very similar.  When you say “red,” the other person sees the same shade, not something a tad more toward orange or purple.  The other person has attitudes, interests, behaviors and tendencies that fit well with your own, and vice versa. 

(A note here to those of you who think this means you both need to “like all the same things or have completely the same beliefs” – wrong again!  Too much sameness is boring and ultimately invites ruin.  But the ideal balance is where you have a great many things in common and you can freely agree to disagree on the others.  But more to the point, you perceive things similarly.  Remember too that while “opposites may attract,” real opposites eventually go in different directions.)

You find that you meet each other’s needs almost without effort.  Perhaps you like being touched, holding hands and being held closely and the other also enjoys touching and hugging.  On the other hand, maybe you are more reserved and not as comfortable with a lot of close contact and the other feels the same way.  You don’t find yourself wanting for an emotional, sexual or intellectual stimulus that the other just doesn’t seem to be able to figure out, and you don’t leave the other lacking (or overwhelmed) either. 

You can talk for hours about everything and nothing at all – without losing interest.  Yet you can also sit together in silence without it being uncomfortable 

And the sex is simply the best and most satisfying either of you can have.  You enjoy playing or experimenting to the same degree and share equal levels of “kink.”  Alternatively, you may be reserved to the same extent, but whichever level you are at, you are both comfortable with that level.  Most important, however, you share equivalent levels of emotion in the process.  Sex is more a tool to express and strengthen your bond, rather than an end to itself – and you both have learned this.

Perhaps the most important things you find with someone like this – things that are so often lacking in more ordinary relationships – are genuine understanding, empathy, trust and respect.  Both partners put the other, and the relationship, first.  The relationship is the most important thing in life for both; you protect it and are careful not to do anything that puts it in jeopardy. 

Each of you knows, almost instinctively, when to “be there” for the other, and just as important, when not to be.  You understand that respecting the other’s individuality and independence can be as important as being ready with a strong shoulder. 

There can still be occasional disagreements and even fights – after all, even the tallest mountains suffer avalanches that can bury you, crevasses you might fall into, and icy gales that can freeze you solid – but they are less frequent, and they don’t last.  Anger is fleeting and is never allowed to intensify or become intentionally hurtful.  You don’t fall into game playing.

A relationship like this doesn’t add to your stress, it’s your safe, snug harbor from the stormy sea of a lousy day.  It makes you feel satisfied, fulfilled and happy.

The Spiritual Side

When all of this exists with someone, it’s what I call a Mount Everest.  But there’s something more with a person like this, something that goes beyond all the tangible factors you can see or feel.  When you look into that person’s eyes, you might both be carried off to another place or another time.  There is, right from the start, an intuitive familiarity between the two of you, almost as though you have known each other before, even though you know that’s not the case (in this life).  There is a spark that runs deep into both your souls, something you don’t find with anyone else.   There is a kind of magic!

This is the phenomenon I call spiritual completion.   I believe that each of us is a spiritual being existing temporarily on the material plane and struggling to find our true spiritual nature.  The essence of being, with which each of us is endowed at birth, runs back much farther in the past and continues long past the end of our short lives.  As such – and whether we realize it or not – we feel a certain detachment or incompleteness in this existence.

To help us grow past that spiritual incompleteness, I believe we are meant to find in our lives certain other people who possess a spiritual essence that is precisely tuned to our own, a spiritual essence that represents our perfect polar opposite (masculine to feminine and vice versa).  If and when we find it, we are changed.  Rather than being two separate souls, we may become two halves of a new spiritual entity, one that brings each of us closer to the ultimate completeness, which is with God, or the universal creative force.  This new entity is inseparable, even if the physical halves are disjoined by distance, circumstance – or death.

There’s an important point to make here for all you hopeless romantics and devotees of romance novels displaying partially clothed caricatures of impossible-looking men with names like Fabio.  There is a world of difference between spiritual incompletion and feeling incomplete on the earthly plane.  So many people feel empty, incomplete or lacking self-actualization (there’s a nice psychological term for you to chew on).  And too many of these people seek to fill that void through reliance on, or even addiction to, other people.  They feel they need someone to love them in order to feel whole. 

Well, I think we all know what happens with these situations, don’t we?  Unless you have gained that self-actualization, you won’t really be able to function in any long-term relationship, not even with your Mt. Everest. 

But that is an earthly or human kind of completion, a sense of independence and self-reliance.  You might even say that a person who hasn’t achieved a mental and physical sense of self-actualization isn’t prepared to become spiritually complete.  It’s like climbing a tree: you have to successfully navigate the lower branches before you can climb up to the higher ones.

So what’s this got to do with mountains?

Anyway, I call this the Mount Everest Theory, because mountains seem to provide the most convenient illustration; they are big and very hard to miss.  Since I’m a guy, I’ll compare the mountains with women (men frequently do).  And since this is a non-gender-based (if not politically correct) theory, you ladies in the reading audience may certainly compare the men you’ve known with mountains; however, no derogatory comparisons to dormant volcanoes are allowed.

When I compare women to mountains, I find that most are foothills; they may look nice from a distance, but up close they’re nothing special.  Whoa!  Down girls!  Remember, we’re talking about our own individual perceptions where the potential for relationships is concerned. 

Now, each of us meets many, many, MANY foothills throughout our lives.  Occasionally, we come across one that’s a bit taller than most (or maybe we’ve just been a little too lonely lately), so we go out a time or two, and perhaps we establish a casual friendship, but that’s about the extent of it.  Then we go our separate ways, continuing to plod through our individual ranges of foothills looking for mountains a little closer to the clouds.  The foothills are just no big deal, but remember, just because you may be a foothill to most mountain climbers, to a select few, you will be a great deal taller.

Eventually we do find some taller peaks, maybe 8,000 to 10,000 feet or so.  Who are they?  Well, for me, these are women to whom I’m attracted enough to actually date and not just because I was looking through beer-colored glasses at the end of the evening in a crowded bar.  A relationship with a mountain this high might actually go on for a while, but it’s not likely to go very long-term, unless you are extremely lonely or make a very stupid mistake. 

How long?  Well, like everything else in this theory, it’s very individualized, but probably not longer than several months for those of you certified by your local love doctor as more or less emotionally healthy beings.  If you’ve been hanging on to something like this much longer than three months, get some reading material on codependency.

So for a few months we’ve been on a slightly higher emotional plateau.  We’ve had a companion for a time, probably gotten enough “nookie” to ward off serious withdrawal symptoms, but we’ve only found part of the puzzle here.  Eventually, we find ourselves unfulfilled (except that we might again form some decent friendships) and we leave that peak to wander again among the foothills in search of something better.

At some point in our Love Trek, we come across a really tall mountain, one that looms a good 14,000 feet, 15,000 feet or more into the sky.  This one is really special, better than all the rest.  It’s way up there, and we find almost all of what we’re looking for.  Is this the one?  Well, it might very well seem like it, but you’ve probably already figured how this is going to turn out.

These 14ers or 15ers are the people with whom we get into very long-term relationships.  We might even marry one.  In fact, I believe this is what most people end up with, and for the most part we may be very comfortable in this relationship.  It may last a lifetime, provide us with children, mothers- and fathers-in law, mortgages, parent-teacher meetings, and the whole extended-family thing.  And if we don’t know any better, we may go through our lives feeling like we pretty much found all there is.

But sometimes life takes us to that rare point where, having already climbed to the top of a 15er, the clouds are blown away to reveal a peak almost twice as high as the one we’ve already reached, something so incredibly substantial and awesomely lasting that even the 15er never looks very tall again.  We’ve discovered Mount Everest.

The Mount Everest relationship is all those things I described earlier and so much more.  In a way, finding a Mount Everest relationship is almost a curse – unless you’re able to keep it the rest of your life.  This is because after a Mount Everest, anything less is just that: less.  You’ll always know it, and it will always leave you feeling a little empty, not because the 14er or 15er doesn’t try, but because we’ve become so much more aware of how immense the possibilities of human relationships can be… with the right person.

How do you know?

How do you know when it’s a Mount Everest and who are these wondrous people who so rarely cross our paths?  I can’t tell you, because, again, it’s extremely individualized.  

Sometimes it’s immediate eye-lock at your first meeting, as though you recognize the person and have some familiarity, even though you know you’ve never met before (in this life).  Perhaps more often, it takes time to sweep away the clouds and discover the attributes that make a Mount Everest; we allow the time for those qualities to reveal themselves through a special friendship, before we take the plunge into the ultimate intimate relationship.

I think this becomes more the case as we get older, partly because we have endured more failures in our attempts to scale the highest peaks, so we approach each new mountain with the caution (fear) accumulated during previous, unsuccessful climbs.  But perhaps it’s also because as we get older we are better able to appreciate the value of good friendships and realize how important this is as the basis of an enduring romantic relationship.

But one of the problems is that the more we shrink away from those emotional risks, the greater the chance we’ll move right past our own Mount Everests, especially if we’re not connected with that creative spiritual energy flowing through the universe.  It’s like baseball:  You can’t get to second base if you’re afraid to take your foot off first. 

Yet, on the other hand, there is always the very real danger of deluding ourselves, letting ourselves believe we’ve found “the one” just because we want it too much, not because it’s real.  Sometimes we’re too focused on just one part of the package - looks, intellect, kindness - and not the total package.  For all too many people, it seems to be the outward physical appearance, the looks (or money) that becomes the focus.  We blind ourselves for a time, especially in those first few months of a new relationship. 

This may be why we so often let a real Mount Everest slip on by while we’re desperately trying to mold someone less into what we really want, but what he or she just doesn’t have the capacity to be for us.  It’s one of the hardest things to be sure about.  Perhaps it takes luck; I think it takes prayer or meditation.

But wait… there’s more. 

I like to believe that God, the universe, spiritual intention, or however you prefer to define it, actually tries to bring our Mount Everests to us at some point in our lives through combinations of “coincidences” for each of us… synchronicity, if you like.  But at the same time, that universal energy seems to like to challenge us, get us to step outside of the cozy boundaries we’ve learned through our cultural domestication. 

Thus, it may be that a Mount Everest might be someone a lot older or younger than you would expect or it may be someone of another culture, language, political viewpoint, nationality or even race.  A Mount Everest may include a challenging circumstance, such as a disability or illness, or the person may already have children or not be able to have children.  There can be an array of circumstances that may be present, but if the actual relationship between the two people is strong enough to overcome those challenges, it becomes even more of a growth experience for both people.

I said earlier that I believe a Mount Everest may only come to you just a precious few times in your entire life.  So, you’re probably wondering how I’ve come to this conclusion – what has happened in my own life to validate this point of view.  Well, I know that I’ve had a Mount Everest at least once and it’s possible that I have already seen my “handful” of possibilities.

The one “for sure” Mount Everest did not work out, which certainly can happen.  At the time, she wasn’t self-actualized, and I wasn’t in the right place emotionally and spiritually then either.  I wondered for a long time after whether it was real or if I was just looking at a 15er through a distorted glass – a glass I was reluctant to put down.   But as the years have passed I’ve come to understand that, for me, she actually was that extraordinarily high peak, which just goes to prove that even with Mount Everests, timing is critical. 

I thought a second time that I had found the potential with someone, but circumstances never allowed us to really find out.  We had an incredibly intuitive kind of closeness and rapport.  But my fears paralyzed me, and I kept my feet on first until the game was over.  Eventually, we both had to move on.  She’s married now and we’re friends, but whenever we run into each other, there is still a special look in her eyes that makes me wonder what we might have had.

At any rate, I do know that I don’t have an enduring Mount Everest in my life yet.   But I’m aware, and I know what I want, so I use that creative universal energy, trust my desires to it, and have faith that it will come at the right time.

The truth, probably, is that only a few people really do find it and make the choice to keep it in their lives; so often it relies on timing (and how many of us feel like our timing is always lousy?).  This could mean that I might not be intended to be so lucky this time around.  The same may be true for you. 

But that’s all right; there’s never a need for desperation in anything (except for finding a clean rest room on a long road trip or running out of beer during the seventh game of the Stanley Cup finals).  I like to think, though, that each of us is held back in anything more by ignorance than by any other factor and that awareness is the key to success (as in: I was aware before the seventh game that I needed more beer). 

But seriously, with awareness, hope and faith, your odds do become a lot better to find and keep one of those few perfect someones who are out there waiting for you to find them.  Besides, even if you don’t make it up Mount Everest this time around, who’s to say you won’t get more chances?