Climb every Mountain - A poetics of Transformation

Taking a photo in Malolotja Swaziland

"My soul looks back and wonders, how I got over?" - Clara Ward (Spiritual)

Almost every day I receive an email from someone telling me about the personal challenges which they are facing. There is a deep need in us to not only surmount our obstacles, but to do it with as much grace as we can.

Let me tell you a little story.

By the time I reached my final year of high school, I knew that I wanted to one day become a doctor. I wanted to help people, and i thought that medicine would be a beautiful concrete way of doing just that.

At the time in order to receive an interview for the medical course in my state you needed to finish in the 98th percentile of all those who sat the Victorian Certificate of Education. I fell short scoring 96.25.....

For a while it seemed that these 1.75 percentage points were going to separate me from my dreams. But like all good stories, there was far more for me to learn....

I enrolled in Biomedical Science and majored in physiology and anatomy. I loved the course and moreso loved all the kindred spirits which I met along the way...some who are still my treasured friends almost 14 years later.

One of those friends was a beautiful, hilarious science/arts student named Susan. ;) She had long flowing blonde hair and was constantly being stalked and receiving proposals of marriage.. lol (you know im right Suze!)...

Our friendship was based on deep mutual respect and so much laughter.... To this day there is no one in the world who can make me laugh like Susan...

One day I walked into the library and Suze was wearing a hijab.... I've written about it here before... I never said a word....not because i didnt deeply respect her courage and faith, but because i knew she'd be receiving enough and more questions from the rest of the anglo-Christian world about becoming a muslim... all she needed from me was a friend to laugh with....

Today Susan is one of the most respected sociologists in Australia. She is a lecturer, feminist, wife of the amazingly generous and intelligent Waleed Aly, mother of two little angels and consummate humanitarian.

She was star of award winning television program Salam cafe and a few years back was given the honour of "Muslim of the year" for her amazing gift at raising awareness, dispelling myths, and bringing cultures together.

But I digress.... (dont get me talking about my friends.....i'll never stop lol!)

When i reached the end of my Biomedical Science degree I heard that the University of Melbourne was offering a post graduate medical degree.

The entrance criteria were as you can imagine very strict and required, among other things, applicants to sit a 7 hour examination which covered university level biochemistry, biology, physics....a psychological assesment (how i passed that part still remains a mystery lol)...and several essay questions.

I spent months preparing and somehow managed to achieve the mark required to gain an interview with the entrance committee at the Medical Faculty...

I'll never forget the night before the entrance interview.... I was a 'nervous wreck'... I kept thinking of how much work i had put in to get to this point and imagined a thousand worst case scenarios.... The more I thought about it, the more anxious I became...

Needing to laugh.... I rang Susan. Little did we know that the gift she would give me during that little phone conversation would change the trajectory of my life...

This is the story she told me:

There was once a mountaineer who had scaled the highest mountains in the world.

But there was one mountain in an exotic land, which he had never been able to climb.

He had tried, over and over again but somehow it seemed the mountain always defeated him.

One cold day he was in a village at the base of the mountain and he gazed up in a wonder at this great adversary which he had never been able to conquer.

As he scanned the mountain side with his binoculars, something caught his eye.

There at the top of the mountain, far beyond the level to which he had ever been able to ascend, was a pregnant woman with a child on her back.

There too, were children and barefoot old men.

He was dumbfounded. He went to a villager nearby and said in anger "How on earth can a pregnant woman, and children climb a mountain which an experienced mountaineer with all the modern equipment in the world has never been able to climb."

The man smiled and said to him "Sir, when you look at this mountain you see a foe. An enemy. Something which you must defeat. And so the mountain always wins.

But when the people of this village look at that same mountain, we see our dear friend. And it is the mountain that helps us to climb."

I went into the interview the next day and saw in the eyes of the selection committee, not my critics, but my friends, waiting to help me fulfill the dream which had been placed in my heart by the universe....

One week later I received a letter congratulating me on my entrance into medicine.

The rest, as they say, is history....

All of us face deep personal struggles.... Many far more profound than simply getting into a course, or achieving success. We live in a wounded world, and brokenness is part and parcel of the journey of life.

But what if the mountain before you, is actually there to help you climb?

What if the 'monsters' in your life are actually friends in disguise....there to help you unfold into the fullness of your own being?

What if by changing our minds about that which is bane and that which is blessing, we change the world....

I look around my little untidy office here in this hospital, and everywhere the light touches, there is proof.... Proof that dreams are possible.

Proof that it is the mountain that carried me every step of the way.

My warmest love to you,

Maithri