You are not in control

In 1998 adventurer Bear Grylls became one of the youngest people ever to climb Mt Everest.  When asked how it felt to have conquered the world's highest mountain, he said: 

“I didn’t conquer Everest:  Everest allowed me to crawl up the one side and stay on the peak for a few minutes”

I read these words while taking a six-day break last week in Zimbabwe.  Zim is hardly a paragon of stability – in fact if you were an expatriate you might accurately describe it as a “hardship post”.  No one – rich or poor - banks on having running water and the electricity supply is similarly tenuous. Yet strangely many have adapted to this.  Residential properties in the more affluent suburbs almost always boast a bore-hole (or at very least some form of water storage system) as well as a generator.  Such people show that managing instability and unpredictability, at least to a point, is possible. 

But there is a point beyond which the illusion of control wears thin.  Where the forces that ultimately determine the extent of one’s wellbeing are just too titanic, unrelenting and malignant to counteract  with one’s resources.

From the vantage point of this relatively un-newsworthy third world nation, I reflected on some of the things that were making world headlines.  The Euro Zone Crisis, stubbornly impervious to any form of intervention.  The worsening relations between Turkey and Syria and the new leadership in Egypt - both with the potential to profoundly impact the global power balance.  And what about global warming?  Seriously, much as I try to do my bit, will my meagre contributions matter in the long run?  Not while America and China keep farting stuff into the atmosphere the way they do.

I found myself pondering this amidst the stoical majesty of Domboshawa Hill, an impressive granite monolith forged umpteen years ago by forces either too ancient or complex to describe here.  And with respect to those headlines, I sensed the powerlessness that the poet Wilfred Owen felt in the face of the “monstrous anger” of World War I:

“It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which titanic wars had groined”

Suddenly I felt like an ant tenuously treading the delicate meniscus of a puddle, aware that at any second the surface tension could give way.  Similar to the indebtedness Bear Grylls felt towards Mt Everest, I felt more keenly than ever that my place on this mountain called Life is more an outcome of divine permission and goodness than anything else.

“Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."

James 4: 13 to 15