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Sue Turi (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

Success in life should be like a mountain, it is commonly thought.

The climb to the summit is steep with occasional resting spots to pause along the way, if you’re lucky.

The goal in life is to reach that pinnacle of ourselves. If not in the form of an athletic, healthy body and good looks, then at least in the form of the accumulation of wisdom, wealth and status.

But what if we were to think of life as a different kind of mountain. It doesn’t have a peak like, say, Everest, or what we typically think of as a “mountain.” In fact, the top of this mountain is flat, like a narrow plateau. It’s like this because it was once the valley of an ocean floor hundreds of millions of years ago. A valley floor of sandstone and quartz that became so compacted that, even when it rose up and out of its bed of sea and soft shale to become a proud mountain, neither eons of incessant wind nor rain could weather it to a lesser, craggier peak.

It is flat-topped because of its resilience to hardship.

To peak in life, though an accepted eventuality, comes at a cost—the weathering of spirit and body to a wick. Mountains that plateau instead of peak have special qualities, like abundant waterfalls that develop rich ecosystems. To hikers, slipping, falling and avalanches are of lesser concern as they climb to its “top,” where a welcome respite from their effort awaits them.

As there is no climactic summiting, there is no anticlimax. But isn’t that what people are looking for: the vertigo of the win, the rags-to-riches story?

In life we can be easily seduced by the extravagant in awe of the extreme, stimulated by an impossible challenge. We feel like progress means going up, escaping gravity and our mortal selves, climbing to dizzying heights and shouting from the top of the world to the less fortunate or talented that we’ve made it.

As triumphant as this feels, extreme endeavors shall always invite equal accounting in a freefall back to reality, as the scales of life search endlessly to balance extremes. For every climb to a heady top, there has to be a descent, which in all likelihood will be depressing: the withering away of ourselves, social isolation and all that it entails on the way down into the abyss. Anyone who has hiked up a steep mountain knows that descending is obligatory and, oftentimes, more difficult.

In English, to plateau does not typically inspire positivity. It’s considered stagnation rather than stability. In economics, a thriving economy is considered a growing economy, and like a plant, this means up and up, exploiting resources, minerals, water, sun and space. But, then exhausted, it collapses towards the earth to attempt another ascent, but this time, with less energy. 

To peak in life is ultimately a mirage, as it assumes that we only have one life, one shot at success before we die. Like a spear, the peaked mountain pierces the, attempting to defy gravity, and thus mortality. But paradoxically, this aspiration also assumes that we have no souls and are finite. It denies such notions such as reincarnation and karma.

Peaking in life as an obligation requires stress and tension: the pressure to overachieve, stay young, climb the status ladder and exploit others in the process. Its arrogance makes it blind to the quality of the journey, to the acceptance of failure and defeat.

Instead, I prefer to think of life as that flat-topped mountain. A place wide and long enough to accommodate everyone: where the clouds bring rain to sustain life, where the reward for effort is stability. Where there is no requirement to ascend so high so as to fall to your peril.

Life is challenging enough without making extra demands to be the best, instead of being good enough. 

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_Mountain 

https://www.thetablemountainfund.org.za/why-is-table-mountain-flat/

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Sue Turi is a writer, illustrator and painter living in Montréal, Canada with a degree in fine arts. She began her career as a production artist for design studios and ad agencies, before deciding to devote herself purely to self-expression through writing and painting.