I AM led to believe that Edmund Hillary was within a couple of hundred metres of the summit of Mt Everest when he and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were confronted by a vertical rock wall.
Now known as the Hillary Step, the 12-metre wall could have been the last straw.
Exhausted, gasping for oxygen, Hillary and Tenzing would later claim that that was the moment when they conquered the mountain.
Within seconds of discovering the wall both climbers were tapping in metal spikes and finding a way up.
That five seconds after first seeing the rock wall were five seconds of “oh no” challenge and doubt – then character kicked in and a choice was made. The rest is history.
Life is full of those five-second choices.
The difference between a great person and the person who lives a compromised life lies within those millions of five-second choices that we all face.
When working with youth, I often say that our call in life is to be “the best me that I can be!”
The secret to that lies with what we do with our millions of five-second choices.
In July 1941 Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan friar, made a five-second choice.
A prisoner in Auschwitz, Fr Kolbe stepped forward and offered his life in exchange for that of another prisoner, Franciszek Gajowniczek, whom the Gestapo officers had picked out to be starved to death as a deterrent to attempting escape from the concentration camp.
As Gajowniczek cried out, “My wife, my children!”, Fr Kolbe stepped forward.
A five-second choice of courage and conviction of the dignity of all of life.
In the years prior to this, Fr Kolbe had made many other five-second choices – to harbour Polish Jews in the Franciscan friary; to turn the friary into a hospital for refugees; and to publish articles critical of the Nazi attack on humanity.
Our lives are full of small choices between compromise of truth and dignity and “to be the best me I can be!”
The choice to cheat within a relationship, to put down another, to cyber-search a porn site, to give over our personal power to another, to allow fear or hurt to entrap us, to hold on to anger, to reach for the bottle or needle or pill and another million examples are all five-second-choice crossroads.
When working with young people I often focus on the five-second choice.
I often use the example of being at a party or club and someone offers them drugs.
Their true self is whispering to them “no!” while peer pressure, the false self, so-called mates and “everyone does it” are screaming at them “do it!”
In those five seconds lies the journey, the road and the map for years to come.
The hardest five seconds are the first.
When the young person (and it’s also all of us in other ways) makes that first choice and calmly says, “Nah, don’t want to, mate!” they are greeted with scorn or ridicule covering a small quiet unheard voice of admiration.
When that choice is made a second and then a third time, each time it gets easier and the night comes when the group’s narrative is: “Billy doesn’t do drugs!”
The flight to inner freedom has begun and that battle won!
But these five-second choices are not all huge. Many are small and apparently insignificant.
When my alarm goes off at 5.20am a small choice awaits my every day.
Five seconds later I am up and getting ready for a coffee and my one-hour sit with God before community prayer.
Don’t ask for the courage to climb Mt Everest nor to swim the English Channel.
Don’t look for the courage to lead a march down Queen Street in support of asylum-seeker rights or the rights of the unborn.
Look for the courage to take the first step however small and in whatever apparently insignificant area of your life.
Then look for and claim the courage to take another and then another.
Claim that five seconds to be the best me you can be.
If you do, you will sense an energy and a power of love and courage – all that is needed to change our world.
Christian Brother Damien Price is a former teacher in Brisbane schools including St Josephís, Gregory Terrace; St Patrickís College, Shorncliffe; and St Laurenceís College, South Brisbane. He continues to work with schools across the country.
