peter
“I used to ski in France, and worked there as a waiter for six months. This was when I was young, and one day I went out skiing in the late afternoon when I had some free time. I didn’t want to miss the opportunity as I hadn’t gone in a while, but the weather was bad and changed very quickly between foggy and sunny. I got lost quite fast and started to wander around the top of this huge mountain hoping to find the way back on track. It took me three hours to get down from that mountain… And I nearly died maybe four or five times. I nearly went off a cliff a thousand feet high, I fell down into a crevasse, an avalanche took me over the edge of the cliff, and then another avalanche missed me by a few feet. I really didn’t think I was going to make it, but it was an amazing experience. I mean I didn’t think about it this way at the time, but when I got back I had a completely different perspective on life. When you face death, all your arguments, fighting, fussing, and all the small stuff that occupies you every day gets cleared away by this bulldozer of an event. It’s like a reset for your life. It made me remember my religion, it made me calm and comfortable, and cleared all my doubts about it.”