Last week, I dug out my old copy of Fit for Life, by the British explorer, Ranulph Feinnes and reviewed it after 10 years. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I didn’t hate it.
This week, I dug out my rather newer copy of Beyond the Limits (affiliate link: UK
Ranulph goes beyond the limits
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What is it about?
Well, it’s kind of a coffee table book summarising all of Ranulph’s great life lessons. He writes a chapter about a phase in his life, then gives a run down of the key one-line lessons he learned.
Here are a few examples:
- Getting started – Ranulph started out in the British Army and had a surprising number of interesting escapades, including time spent with the Sultanate of Oman during a war. He also kick-started his exploratory career with an expedition up the Nile. At the end of it all, he concludes (amongst other things) that we should:
- Aim high but start with caution
- Don’t relax too soon
- Be observant in readiness to react
- The learning process – Ran’s next trips that he talks about are in Norway and British Columbia, where he describes numerous hair-raising events and learns some dour lessons. He concludes:
- Help aspirants to your trade as you were once helped
- It is easier to avoid fear than to overcome it
- Be flexible but remember that sometimes an option is to be inflexible
- Make or break – Ran’s next chapter talks about the start of the famous TransGlobe expedition, where he and others became the first people to circumnavigate the globe around the poles. He comments:
- Life is too short to waste on second-class ambitions
- Don’t ask for advice if you don’t mean to follow it
- Starting the ball rolling may get rid of the obstacles
- Dictator or democrat- Ran concludes the TransGlobe expedition with a detailed examination of the race to the North Pole and the return. He says about this:
- Balance short-term caution against long-term dangers
- Never rest on your laurels
- Don’t linger too long in a warm hut when the weather can change
- Lateral thought – despite being in debt from the TransGlobe expedition, Ran heads off on a race to be the first to reach the North Pole unsupported (i.e. man-hauling). He remembers:
- Sarcasm and mockery are fun but can easily go wrong
- Avoid arguments but if you do have them bury the hatchet
- Live donkey or dead lion – Ran talks about the next major expedition, the race to be the first to cross the Antarctic continent. The expedition was only partly successful. It was a success in that it set a new world record for unsupported polar travel but it did not achieve all they set out to do. Ran says:
- To avoid being crushed by the thought of all future difficulties, break into smaller goals
- Know when to turn back – better a live donkey than a dead lion
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I guess my favourite Ran-isms are “balance short-term caution against long-term dangers” because it sums up for me the failure of today’s society.
We are all about eliminating short-term risks (like steps we might trip over or exercise that might cause us to get out of breath) and are appallingly bad at managing long-term dangers (like cardiovascular disease, diabetes and general atrophy as we age).
