Aunty Maude solves everyday dilemmas.
Dear Aunty Maude
For years, my friend has been the volunteer secretary of the local agricultural show committee. She has been trying desperately to find someone – anyone – to take over her duties. This year especially, because she has planned a trip to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.
I don’t know what her job entails, exactly, but I get the sense that if the role of president is the tip, then the role of secretary is the iceberg. It looks like she will cancel her Kilimanjaro trip because of her un-pass-on-able duties, which makes me feel terrible, but not terrible enough to actually take on the role. What should I do?
Daisy
Dear Daisy
Frankly, it sounds like your friend should be writing to me for advice. When she finally frees herself from her gruelling job, she plans to unwind by ... climbing Mount Kilimanjaro? What happened to a good old-fashioned lie-down? Must everything be an ordeal?
I almost climbed Kilimanjaro myself, once. Shortly after Jim died, my girlfriends took me on a trip to Tanzania. We had a booking and all the gear, but a taste was all I needed. As we ascended the steps to our Moshi hotel room, I said, “Ladies, that’s far enough for me.”
They went, I stayed – and was entertained for days by a lovely young man named Azizi. Since then, I have been practising the Buddhist philosophy of non-attachment and the middle way, which means you look but don’t climb.
Some people are incorrigible, like this volunteer secretary of yours. Can she not – like the cows in the fields of the agricultural show – simply be? You should ask yourself how you let things get this far. If Kilimanjaro isn’t a cry for help, I don’t know what is.
Your immediate options are these:
Hike up your panties and take the job, though it sounds like you’re unwilling to do this. Sensible.
Offer to climb Kilimanjaro on her behalf. More sensible.
If you make it to the top, you will be faced with the irony shared by all conquerors, high achievers and my own mountain-climbing friends. After waking at two o’clock on the final morning and hiking for hours through darkness to reach the peak by sunrise, they find themselves standing on top of the only thing for miles around worth looking at.
Maude
