Mountain of Spirits

I’m not a woo-woo person. I don’t really believe in spirits or mysticism in general. I walked into a hostel here in Mont tremblant and it read that the ancient Algonquin tribe called this place Manitonga Soutana, “The Mountain of Spirits.”

After living here for a couple of weeks, I’m starting to believe it. I don’t know what happens up there. I don’t know what it is about being in the snow, moving down a fucking hill, that makes you feel like humanity loves you. Like anything is possible. But I know it happens. And at this point, I don’t even know if I want to find out why if I try too hard, who knows, I might jinx the mystery, and then it stops working.

Is it actually a mountain of spirits? Am I talking to them? Is this some heroic dose of ayahuasca disguised as a ski lift? I’ll never know. But I had the time of my life here.

All year, my life felt like a race. And even at the ski hill the race didn’t stop. I was still working hard, I remember texting my colleagues in between runs and I had to force myself to not check slack too often but something was really different . The common phrase I hear is “I pulled out of my mind into my body,” a phrase used by a lot of health freaks. That was probably true, but I think I remember something else. I’m not quite sure how to describe it other than this odd sense of feeling that everything is complete and I want nothing more.

This is it, it’s a good life, this is the best time, I want to be here, I’m happy. But if it all ends, that’s great, and if it all goes on forever, that’s great too. Everything happening is fine, and the other things that could happen like for example, this chairlift falling down and me coming to my end are also perfectly fine.

Maybe I didn’t learn anything here. Maybe that’s the point.

All this rumination, trying to figure out what it means, what I should take away it’s counterproductive. When you’re really in love with something, it pulls you so fucking hard you forget who you are. You stop asking what you’re learning. You stop asking anything.

Maybe that’s the transcendence.

That reversed the causality.

I was trying to become a certain kind of person in order to be happy. But the real move is to be happy and let the person I become emerge from that.

When you’re happy, you don’t even think about it. Joy shifts your worldview. The rumination stops because there’s no space for it. You’re too busy living.

So I’m done trying to earn joy. I’m just going to live it.

Me, so happy I’m literally in tears