What do challenges like these give us?
This is a big subject in its own right, and there would be plenty to write about it. Let’s start with why we should take on such things at all, or whether we need to. Number one, for anyone familiar with sport theory: one of the many functions of sport is the predictive function. If we never made such demanding efforts and never probed our limits, we simply wouldn’t know what we are capable of. How far can a person walk non-stop, what weight can be lifted, how much heat can be endured, how long can we go without water, how high can we climb, how deep can we dive, and so on and so on. This knowledge matters to humankind as a whole, but it matters to each individual too. In short, a normal person wants to find out what they are capable of, who they are, what they can do and what they can’t. This urge to test our limits should already be written into our genes.
Number two, such feats create and reveal values and help us understand them. The experiences we gain from situations like these have an indescribably positive effect on our willpower, our personality, our worldview and our ability to perceive the life around us. The whole undertaking is itself bursting with examples of cooperation, willpower, perseverance, drive, endurance, goal setting and goal achievement. These are all qualities we each have to work on, and developing them to a certain level can only do us good.
The author Martha Grimes put it aptly: “We can’t know who we are until we’ve seen what we can do!” Quite often there is no logic or tangible, visible deeper point in such undertakings (challenges that seem unrealistic and pointless). Yet such deeds help us discover ourselves more than anything else in this world. Why should people know who they are or what they can do? There is a very simple reason: when people know their place under the sun and know who they are dealing with in themselves, they are content, better and happier. Aren’t those reasons enough to take on such things?
You could just as well ask what on earth people go looking for at the summit of Mount Everest. Exactly the same pointlessness, torment, toil and road to Golgotha. On top of that, it comes with big risks to health and life. And yet people go. To prove what? Why climb to the top of some mountain, risk God knows what and prove something?
But that nobody loves hard work any more has been known for a long time. At school sports days we throw rubber boots and mobile phones, walk on crutches and run a 10 m sack race. Fun for a change, but forming the main attitude from that is the height of stupidity! And then we wonder why young people are stressed, nervous, up to nonsense or simply inactive. Meanwhile the education system and its “heads” at the helm loudly and resoundingly declare that you must not force anyone. What folly, what shortsightedness and inability to connect the dots. Knowing that I once threw a rubber boot 17.5 m at a municipality day gives no satisfaction at all, no self-fulfilment whatsoever. Quite simply, it has no value, not for others, not for spectators, not for the thrower. At best a fleeting, fake emotion; “tomorrow” nobody cares any more. And that is because it takes no effort. When something comes simply, easily, without effort, we don’t value it. Why are people dissatisfied and unfulfilled? Precisely because they don’t love hard work; they positively fear it. All activities must, for heaven’s sake, be ones that cause no suffering or pain. Everything has to be supremely comfortable and stress-free. Yet we talk about depression, sleep disorders and anxiety disorders, and again and again about young people being overweight and physically very weak. The cause is obvious: these symptoms appear precisely when a person doesn’t expend or tire themselves physically to the necessary degree. A simple example: take a teenage boy who hangs around the village bus station every evening, and put him to digging potatoes for several hours or hauling branches in the forest for 6 – 7 hours straight. Then see whether he still feels like going to “hang out” at the bus station in the evening. Hardly. On the contrary, he learns to value his time far more and to fill it with better quality. If on the first days he may still, out of habit, find the strength to go loiter there after a tiring day, then after 4 – 5 days he doesn’t, or if he does, he comes home at nine or half past nine in the evening instead of the earlier quarter past two.
More and more schools have so-called anxiety disorders, hyperactive children and children with all kinds of behavioral problems. You know, let’s put our children to work, let’s make them do at least a little physical work, literally sweat, and these diagnoses will start to decline. Let’s start with this: when a school has a sports day with a 1000 m run on the program, half the school has exemption notes. I could give dozens of examples of students who manage the 60 m sprint, the long jump and the ball throw splendidly, but by the time the 400 m or 1000 m comes around, someone’s knee has started hurting, someone’s ankle, or someone simply vanishes.
And against all that backdrop, people ask what such things (Silvar’s trek) are even for. What does it give? What a contradiction! And when someone who is different, who values hard work, who dares to set challenging goals that demand self-overcoming, pulls something like that off, those very same promoters of “mock sports days” in schools clap their hands, gasp and ooh, are amazed and say what a big deal it is, and so on. So why don’t you approach things that way yourselves? Why do you brand hard work and effort unacceptable, why do you say the younger generation must not be worn out in any way, that everything has to be so comfortable, and why don’t you take on such things yourselves? What a comedy!
Healthiness. You also hear a lot: “Is this kind of thing healthy?” “Just think what will happen to the legs, with no sleep, tired, sunstroke and so on.” Dear ones, that is peanuts compared with what 99.9% of people do to their health 24/7. The very same online commenter who scribbles a comment about health damage under Silvar’s superhuman undertaking is munching a doughnut while sipping a sweet juice drink. Only a couple of days ago he found out that he has type II diabetes. His body fat percentage is 34, his blood pressure is high, he feels consistently bad and his performance is poor. But that walking 180 km is unhealthy, this man knows well. The height of absurdity! And whole generations are growing up in this style. Health is important and that can’t be denied, but this excessive “healthiness” theme is simply a good way to disguise laziness and slackness. One such ordeal may offer more joy, emotions and experiences than the events and activities of an average person’s 5 – 10 years put together. You learn to endure, you learn to know yourself, to push yourself and pull yourself together, you learn to know others. I would compare such an extreme ordeal, and getting through it, in a sense to going to the theater. Only it’s a play in which we ourselves take part. Whether as a positive character or the lead, how the final act turns out, whether it will be an adventure or a drama, we ourselves decide. Like going to the theater, watching a film or reading a book, we learn from all of these, gain some wisdom, draw some conclusions, experience something. The only difference between those activities and an extreme test of yourself is that in the latter the knowledge gained doesn’t remain theoretical; we take part in the course of events ourselves, in practice, as it happens.
I’ll be honest: questions like “what for, what’s the point, what are you trying to prove?” really get under my skin. My answer is to ask back: what’s the point of doing anything at all? What’s the point of trying this, that or any other thing? You see, with that attitude, all of sport, competitive sport, the Olympic Games and in fact life itself are completely trivial, pointless and unnecessary.
Ever since I was a little boy, that kind of “skepticism”, that holding back and constant reference to “staying healthy” has irritated me. As I’ve stressed many times before, you can’t get anything done that way, because something can always happen. Even the old proverb says, “whoever does things will have the odd mishap” – so should we just not do anything?
But enough, for now. I’d sum up the journey Silvar called for and so successfully carried out with a fitting thought from the American marathon runner John Bingham, who has completed more than 40 full marathons: “The miracle isn’t that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.”
Don’t be afraid of hard work, don’t be afraid of effort, don’t be afraid to push yourself and take on challenges. The satisfaction, and the growth that comes from it, which you earn after sustained effort, deep exhaustion or struggle – there is no alternative to it! This is the attitude and the understanding our whole younger generation should grow up with!
“The miracle isn’t that they finished. The miracle is that they had the courage to start at all”…
Author: Janar Rückenberg
Come to training! ArtGym
