top of page
Search

You Can't Hurry A Sherpa

Writer's picture: Jade LeeJade Lee

Along the trekking trail, I was obsessed with asking how long... how long to the next village, how long till we stop for lunch, how long till we stop for the night so I can charge my phone, get some Wi-Fi and post about this amazing adventure I’m having? I get how we can believe that posting about something is more important than living it – but my Sherpa certainly didn’t. His response to my ‘Are we there yet?’ questions was always noncommittal. ‘…30, 40 minutes…,’ he would say. I was thinking, ‘Which is it? 30 or 40? Surely, you can tell me at least that? Would you turn up to a meeting 10 minutes late? Would you expect the bus to be there 10 minutes after it’s due? How can you be on time for a plane, buddy?’ Then it dawned on me: time really didn’t matter to these beautiful people. There would always be another bus no matter where you were meant to get to. At the end of the trekking day, there would be a hot ginger tea and curry waiting for you on the stove, anticipating your arrival. You would sit down and chat to your hosts for an hour before being shown to your room or given some sustenance. A few minutes (or an hour) here or there made no difference.


It wasn’t that my Sherpa could not give me a specific answer, it was that he really didn’t care. Gobinda was soaking up the experience of trekking through the Himalayas, staring at his beloved mountains and being genuinely interested in the conversations with his clients, learning more about the world outside of Nepal.


When you are fully present in any situation, you are engaged. Creating an environment for people to be less distracted will improve engagement in any workplace, and – interestingly – it also increases productivity because people are focused on one task and doing it well. Humans crave social connection, and unfortunately the connection that we are fooled into believing we derive from social media is not only insufficient, but also often detrimental to achieving genuine connection. The dopamine hit we receive when someone likes one of our posts leaves us craving the next hit.


A lesson that all our trekking team learnt in the Himalaya’s was slowing down and appreciating the act of living in the moment. I learnt how to enjoy the stillness, let go of preconceived ideas and appreciate the splendour in each breath I took along that trek (although some were more difficult than others). It was hard to slow down, our western society glorifies being busy, filling our days, rushing from one event to another, one email to another, one task to another, actually let’s do 3 tasks at once, ensuring that all of them will be done badly.


When Gobinda came to Australia, he could not believe how busy my life was. At one point he became totally exasperated and asked why I was always in a hurry. It was a good question, I wasn’t sure, it was what was expected and what I had grown to consider “normal”, but I realised that this was not a good reason. At that point I reflected and consciously built-in down time to our weekends. Over time I too became comfortable just “being” and not “doing”. Again, this is hard to do because we are not experienced at “being” but there is so much to be gained in that state. A state of being, activates our parasympathetic nervous system, which lowers our blood pressure and promotes digestion, this can most easily be achieved by slowing down our breath. The more time we spend with our parasympathetic nervous system activated the healthier we are.


You can’t hurry a Sherpa but why would you want to, he has mastered the art of being, appreciating, slowing down and creating true connection with himself and those around him. The ability to connect with our body, feel emotions and know our values is what it is to be fully human. Slowing down may just be the key to finding the meaning that we have been conditioned to believe being busy will bring.

19 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page