Friday, May 25, 2007

Plucky People You Should Know

Earlier this month, Samantha Larson (age 18) reached the summit of Mt. Everest, becoming the youngest person to have scaled the "seven summits"--the highest mountain on each of the continents.

Her first summit experience was Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa when she was 12 years old--and apparently, she was hooked.

Check out her web site at http://www.samanthalarson.com/index.html.

She's got a a pretty amazing level of focus and determination--not to mention pluck--for anyone, let alone someone so young. I wonder if that's something you're born with, or if you pick it up somewhere along the way.

I know a few people--very few--with that kind of focus. One of them is Mike Barratt, a NASA astronaut and mission specialist who's training for a long duration flight on the International Space Station. Here's a link to Mike's NASA biography: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/barratt-mr.html.

I don't have that kind of focus or pluck. (BTW, isn't "pluck" a really great word?) My kind of focus is the kind that enables me to write a blog post a few times a week on top of all the TV I've got to watch. Sometimes I just don't think I'll be able to get it all done.

Oh well, I guess there's a reason that there's all kinds of folks in the world. It would be so dull if we were all like Samantha Larson or Mike Barratt--everybody would be all fulfilled and high-achieving and stuff, and nobody would want to stay home and do the laundry. Then there'd be heck to pay.

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