To: Isaac Wu
“I feared boredom and mediocrity much more than I feared failure... [G]reat is better than terrible, and terrible is better than mediocre, because terrible at least gives life flavor.” — Ray Dalio
Isaac wore a button-down and khakis to school, but he never made it to first period on time. He’d take his place next to me in the back, and we took turns paying attention.
From 7th grade onwards, we did pretty much everything together. We skipped school on the weekdays and spent the weekends with our Boy Scout troop, where we chugged gallons of milk until we puked, sprayed bug spray ‘til our skin turned green, and ripped off leeches after swimming in the lakes. We didn’t take life too seriously, and the outdoors quickly became home.
High school didn’t change much. Our parents worried if we’d get into college, so they signed us up for debate. Instead of spending the summers canoeing down the Mississippi or peeling sunburnt skin from our legs, we were sent to month-long debate camps to learn the art of persuasion. We did some of that, and we did some things on our own—sneaking into Chinatown for dinner, playing beach volleyball with strangers, and watching the sun dip behind the ocean.
By the time college apps came around, we were still using tournaments as excuses to travel and school as a test for how much we could get away with. When it was time to put pen to paper, we downed caffeine pills like vitamins, answering essay prompts with stories of our past. Three all-nighters later, we submitted what we had on a whim and a prayer (Isaac was accepted to USC on their highest Presidential scholarship, and I got into Harvard).
After senior year, Isaac and I parted ways in August. We met new friends and decided our majors, but we didn’t understand the rush to grow up. Nonetheless, we worked hard, studying during the fall and spring and interning over the summer. He visited me when I interned in NYC after our first year, and I visited him when he interned in NYC after our second.
A few semesters in, Isaac sent me a picture of Acatenango (an active stratovolcano towering over 13,000 feet tall). We were broke, but the Department of State’s travel advisory was enough to discourage tourist activity—so naturally, we booked the cheapest round-trip flights to and from Guatemala City.
When we arrived, the airport was surrounded by watchtowers and barbed wire. Men patrolled with AK-47s, and barricades covered windows of homes in the city. We had a week to kill before our summit, so we legged forty miles into the jungle to find the ancient Mayan pyramids. Our guide (Adrian) was a local, and he didn’t use a map or phone; he walked confidently through the forestry, and we followed behind—not too close to give him space, and not too far to lose our way.
At El Mirador (the largest known Mayan pyramid nearly the size of the pyramids in Egypt), the ancient wooden stairwell to the top was rotten from rain, and the stones were slick with moss and lichen. Much of its 2000-year old ruins were overgrown by vegetation, and most of the city was underground. Ditching our boots and crawling on our hands and knees, we slowly made our way to the peak, where we shared a pack of cigarettes with Adrian and surveyed the vast expanse of the Guatemalan jungle.
The hike itself was not easy; it’s impossible to ignore how intensely the jungle is alive. You’re careful to avoid pit vipers and black widow spiders, and you check diligently for ticks every night. Just when you’re ready for bed, the howler monkeys would go apeshit, screeching nonstop ‘til dawn.
We came out of the jungle looking like refugees from a bad survival movie. Isaac’s outsoles were so loose they made his shoes look like flip-flops, and my stomach couldn’t go an hour without forcibly emptying my guts out.
The next two days were spent recovering by the beautiful Lake Atitlán, where we swam, kayaked, and cliff dived with locals who knew where to go for the best shrimp ceviche. On our last night we bought dinner for a local, who in exchange, gifted us some of his “homemade” Guatemalan kush. Isaac and I took it as a sign of goodwill, and we said our goodbyes before heading to a run-down hostel near the base of Acatenango.
While checking in, we met Cora. She’s a 29-year-old German tourist with a broken, bionic foot from an unlucky boating accident and a scuba diving license from Mozambique. Cora was still recovering from her second bout of malaria, but she was determined to make the climb. She joined us to form a trio, and we soon found a local who was willing to take the three of us to the top.
On the trail, kids no older than fifteen flew past us with packs twice as heavy, and Cora’s bionic foot killed our complaints. Every half hour the volcano would vomit out dust and debris, and we’d do the same the closer we got to the summit. By the time our group arrived at midpoint, Isaac and I ran out of water, but we pushed on through the night. I remember collapsing just a few hundred meters from the crater, watching the volcano jet lava into the sky before blacking out.
Acatenango stood untouchable; stars danced across the heavens while rivers of orange and red swept down the mountainside. The city of Antigua shimmered faintly in the distance, but from the summit, it felt as if time stood still as the outside world faded away.
Isaac and I were gamblers who never lost, grifters who made the most of life with what we had. Even in college, the corporate hamster wheel never beat our lust for life, and we spent breaks together reminiscing about the good old days or daydreaming about a future beyond industry.
Isaac’s now on gap, spending the year in Asia. Every few weeks he’ll send me an update of how his motorcycle blew up or a selfie of him and some Vietnamese uncles. He’s seen things—generosity of people who have nothing to give, villages swept away by rainstorms, and an old man slip down the stairs and smash his skull wide open. When the police asked Isaac to help, he could only stare in shock at the body, a reminder of how fragile life really is.
But there’s hope; somewhere along the way, we learned to dance between the raindrops, flirting with life and tangoing with what it means to be happy. That’s not to say we’ve got it all figured out—Isaac’s going to work in finance where he’ll work hundred-hour workweeks, and I’m doing something not all that different. Maybe I just gotta go outside again.
Aristotle & Socrates of our time