What attracts high achievers to Mount Everest?

One of the victims of the Nepal earthquake, Dan Fredinburg, was a senior executive at Google. He and his team specialized in taking photos in remote areas for use on Google Maps. During his trip to Nepal to climb Mount Everest, he tragically lost his life in an avalanche triggered by the earthquake.

So why do people travel all the way to Nepal to climb mountains? And why are so-called high achievers so drawn to Everest? Lin Chien-fu, President of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research and a professor in the Department of Economics at National Taiwan University, wrote in a column for the China Times’ Forum on May 5. He stated that “mountaineering” brings people happiness not through money or power, but through the sense of achievement from adventure and the complete dedication involved in the process—akin to the Zen concept of focusing the mind, which allows one to control consciousness and achieve self-actualization.

Lin Chien-fu explained that being able to control consciousness and achieve self-actualization is a state of flow experience (Flow experience), a theory proposed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In a flow experience, individuals become one with what they are doing, driven strongly to achieve their goals and fulfill their inner desires.

This state aligns with another psychologist Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Human Needs,” which outlines five human needs: physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization, with an additional highest need added later in life: the “peak experience” of transcendence and unity with the universe.

The highest level of self-actualization and peak experience comes from taking risks to unlock human potential, which enables self-fulfillment and the enjoyment of a feeling of unity with the universe. This is the ultimate pursuit of high achievers.

Although Dan Fredinburg has passed away, his life philosophy of “living twice as much in half the time” is worth learning from. His friends created the LiveDan website, featuring glimpses of Dan’s life, his messages, his plans to help orphans, his joys and values in life, hoping to inspire more people.