Bealach na Ba

They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes. Last week I drove up Bealach na Ba, the famed granddaddy of bealachs up here in Scotland. Formerly used as a cattle drover’s road (ba is Gaelic for cattle), it’s notoriously winding, the greatest road climb in the UK, and beloved of shows like Top Gear and so on.

Truth be told, it was fantastic and yet also just a wee bit meh – sorry, sacrilegious, I know. Not as wildly sharp as some other passes I’ve been on. Not even that difficult a drive in comparison to a few of the roads I’d been driving all week in the remote northwest.

Maybe because the weather was neither sun-drenched nor thunderous as it had been earlier that day. Maybe because I was in a car and not on foot in the middle of nowhere as usual. Maybe I should have cycled it like the two guys I cheered on as they went past, all grimaces and pained smiles. Maybe I should have walked it as a pilgrim. A little like I did with two coffin roads in the previous days (more on those another time).

And maybe this is hindsight talking.

Achieving goals is a buzz, even with such a simple one as above. Yet too often that high is short-lived. The drive that takes us up one mountain needs a new one. We hit the summit and our eyes turn to the next. Sitting in my office now, listening to the late, beautiful Ryuichi Sakamoto, I’m already planning my next trip, my next summits, my next goals.

I’ve had the good fortune to meet and work with people who have achieved amazing ambitions. With such people, for sure, there is satisfaction and pride – and also humility. The greats have the confidence of knowing where they stand and what it means to have done what they have done, but also what more remains. And with most there is that look in their eyes that points to the horizon and what now? Sadly, we see too often how elite performers – sports, arts, business – suffer with their mental health in the aftermath of their success.

Goals, destinations, summits, whatever we call them, are useful, frequently crucial guiding lights. Yet focusing purely on the destination is both unsustainable and a theft of the here and now. As ever, it’s the journey. Living well, being true to ourselves now, not deferred to some dreamt of point over the horizon.

The whole future lies in uncertainty – live immediately

Seneca

So maybe we should see ourselves, as these north stars lead us on, as already there. The goal is the life we lead, not the one we aspire to lead. As fully and as well as we can.

One day I will go back to Bealach na Ba and I will cycle it. And another time I will walk it. And on both days I will try to remember what I’ve just written about living in the moment. And enjoying it. Through gritted teeth no doubt.

Be well.

Julian

I help people lead their own way forward

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