I’ve been thinking this week about the greatest mystery in mountain lore. On 8 June 1924, Edward Mallory and Sandy Irving were observed by telescope near the peak of Mount Everest, making their way to the summit to become the first people to reach the highest point on Earth. Clouds rolled in and obscured them from view, and they were never seen alive again.
Did they reach the peak? It is likely that we will never know.
Mallory, when asked by a reporter why he was so obsessed with climbing the mountain, famously said ‘Because it’s there’. He later admitted that it was a dismissive answer, thrown out in irritation at being pursued by journalists. But the phrase stuck in the popular imagination.
The year before he died, Mallory expanded on his throw-away comment, having been repeatedly asked what he had meant by it. He said:
“People ask me, ‘What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?’ and my answer must at once be, ‘It is of no use.’ There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron.”
This admission is startling as Mallory admits that his life’s goal, the one thing he fixated on throughout his adult life, had no outward purpose. If it did bring benefit, it was only incidental and trivial. So what did drive him to risk the life of himself and his team? He continued:
“If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to live. This is what life means and what life is for.”
In one sense, I find Mallory’s perspective incredibly selfish. If taken at his word, he suggests that one’s own pleasure is all that should drive us, not what joy we bring to others. But I do not believe that this was a philosophy for life. After all, Mallory did much for others, as a teacher, a husband and father, and as a friend to his fellow climbers. Mallory was simply describing a deep, inner compulsion that drove him ‘upward and forever upward’. The satisfaction of this compulsion made him feel like he was alive. To that I can relate.
What brought all of this to mind was a question I was asked this week about what what motivates me to do the job I do. I was tempted to say ‘Because it’s there’. It would have been a flippant answer, but one grounded in some truth. We can invent a narrative about our motivations, and even come to believe the narrative we create. We can talk of servitude to others, of the joy of working with young people, or the fact that every day is different. These are all credible narratives. But the truth for most of us is that we didn’t choose to work in schools as part of some great career plan, we just ended up here. And we might get great satisfaction seeing the success of our pupils, overhearing some witty banter, or being constantly surprised by just how unpredictable kids can be, but this isn’t the source of that deep, inner compulsion to keep going, upward and forever upward, when the going gets tough.
The reason I have clocked up 30 years in this mad, mad world of education is because there is some deep satisfaction, and occasionally even joy, in the forever upward. Unlike climbing a mountain, there is no peak we will reach. Working in education is, as many have observed, a Sisyphean endeavour; we are cursed to forever push the boulder uphill. But if we see this struggle as a curse, we won’t find the will to carry on. Instead, like Mallory, we must see the joy in the climb. Setbacks, frustrations, mistakes, disappointments… that’s exactly what we are here for. If it wasn’t difficult, it wouldn’t be worth doing.
So, I like to think that Mallory and Irving didn’t get to the top. Instead, they are somehow struggling upward and forever upward, experiencing the sheer joy of life itself, putting one foot in front of the other for eternity.
Matthew Evans 