Sometimes you lose a forest
through the trees. -Chinese Proverb
This past Sunday was my
friend's 33rd birthday. To celebrate, we wanted to go climb a 14er. For the uninitiated, a 14er is a mountain that is over 14,000 feet high. I've climbed 15 of them. My friend has climbed 44.
There was
one major problem, the weather. The weather was predicted to be just NASTY on the mountain we were trying to climb. On Sunday, there was a "90% chance of snow, with 8-12" expected and temperatures in the
10's." The climb would be treacherous.
In spite of the obvious
difficulties, we really wanted to go climb a mountain. We are experienced winter climbers and have plenty of protection for a day out in the snow. We figured we could make it to the top in spite of the
weather. But we wanted a little more information about the particular mountain we would climb. We wanted to know how dangerous the mountain is during white-out conditions. So went on a forum to ask some people
who were familiar with the route. I got some thought-provoking responses:
This reminds me of the saying,
"If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it."
The first question is whether it
will even be safe to drive to the trail head.
It certainly has portions of the
route(s) where loose snow could make the outing dangerous.
That was some great feedback. I
hadn't even thought of the roads. Getting over a major Colorado pass in a snowstorm is no easy feat. Then my socks were blown off by a final (one might say throwaway) comment, "If you do
give it a look, good luck! From your profile image, you have 3 important reasons to return home safely!" The responder was looking at the picture of my kids I use on my internet
profile. I realized what I was doing when I read that statement. I almost let my desires get the best of me. It would have been stupid to climb that mountain on Sunday. The risk simply wasn't
worth the reward.
The same is true in our
professional lives. It's easy to let the desire to complete one transaction overwhelm our good sense.
I'm an appraiser. I need to
complete appraisals for my business to prosper. But if I was to appraise something for more than it was worth, I would be putting my entire business at risk to complete one shortsighted deal. I could get
the deal done, while killing my business in the process. That's no way to live and no way to prosper. This weekend I remembered that sometimes, it's a good idea NOT to climb the mountain. |
