Written July, 15, 2009 by Ilya Brotzky. Date when it all began.
“It’s Not The Mountain We Conquer, It’s Ourselves.”
Sir Edmund Hillary said that. He was the first person to climb Mount Everest.
It’s been one of my favorite quotes since I read it in elementary school and has inspired me to push myself further and further in swimming and academia since.
Today I feel as though I’ve pushed past a new boundary, into the beginning of a new chapter in my life. In order to properly share where I’m coming from, I’ll start at the beginning. Even though it may be long, it’s my heart and soul right now, so please bear with me.
Having been born in the developing world and moving to Canada as an immigrant from a young age, I’ve always had a feeling of empathy to those less fortunate. Like a thorn in the back of my mind, always speaking up each time I pass a homeless person or see someone new to the group, this feeling has stayed with me throughout my life and it has become increasingly more difficult to ignore.
I grew up always striving to achieve the next level. Be it an A on the test, a national swimming standard, or a scholarship to an elite university. Thankfully, I’ve been lucky enough to squeeze into Cornell, where this feeling of care for those less fortunate has begun to flourish. But I’d only got there because of swimming.
When I was eight years old, I started swimming with one goal in mind: compete in the 2008 summer Olympics. I remember reading a quote from Pavel Brue, my idol back then having moved to Vancouver during the Canucks ‘94 cup run, that his father told him, “If you’re going to do something, do it to be the best.” I took that attitude and worked towards my goals. I had some modest success. Made a few provincial teams, got to travel throughout North America, and even represented Canada at the Youth Olympics here in Sydney. But after my first year of varsity while swimming for UBC, I had the option to transfer to Cornell, representing a choice between School and Swimming.
Knowing that the Olympics were a long shot and that I had always wanted to go to business school, I decided to apply to Cornell see what would happen. By an act of God, (really there is NO other way for me to have gotten in, just ask my high school friends) I got in.
At Cornell things began to change. I was no longer a swimmer first and everything else second. I was a student, then a swimmer. In addition, I did not get along with the Cornell team as well as I had with the guys at UBC who were the most fun group of guys I’d known, always laughing and making jokes, compared to the guys only environment in which your reputation rested on how drunk you got the weekend before and how many girls you hooked up with.
I began looking for new groups to fit into and found a number of clubs that supported international development and entrepreneurship, but unfortunately my time spend working with them was limited by the 20 hours spent in the pool, not to mention my school work.
Fast forward to February Junior year. I had applied to become a StartingBloc Fellow the Christmas before and was accepted into the Boston 2009 institute to be held at Tufts and MIT. I had just gotten back from training camp in Puerto Rico where I spent 10 days training with the team, in addition to other not to be mentioned activities. Returning to snowy Ithaca was a moral killer and I’d grow sick and tired of seeing the same 20 guys for the last month.
The trip to Boston an intellectual, moral and social breath of fresh air. I drove up with a group of Cornellians and was immediately in a different state of mind. Social Entrepreneurs from all over the world had flown in for this weekend. I sat in an auditorium full of Indians, Americans, Canadians, Brits, Chileans, and other countries I can’t even remember. Everyone was so well rounded and enthusiastic. Like Cornell, I couldn’t believe that I belonged among these people, but as the weekend went on I felt more and more at home. They were all so positive. Coming out of that weekend, I felt like I was part of something special and encourage anyone who is interested in building his or her network and making an impact to apply.
I almost quit swimming on the spot. It had always been a source of new opportunities for me, new places to travel, new people to meet, new goals to chase down. Now, I saw swimming as a burden, the same people, the same small pool; my just heart wasn’t in it. I decided to swim through until championships and with the help of the LZR got all best times.
At the same time, I was organizing a trip to Antigua, Guatemala to help build a house. It was another experience that showed me that there was more to life than school and swimming and that what I did could really make an impact in others lives. The feeling of accomplishment I got that week was unparalleled, and the fact that I had, in part, made that happens was a great confidence boost.
This is was my thinking at the end of the school year. I was looking forward to going back to Australia and seeing what happened here. It was great at the start, (see: Thank You Apple) but as the summer went on, I had started to feel as though I was in more and more of a rut. As my last two posts outlined, doing PowerPoint’s and Excel sheets has not been fulfilling to say the least, but thankfully I work with some of the coolest people I’ve met. (Had to say that in case one of them reads this haha, but seriously, you guys rock, who else gives you a lift to go clubbing in Bondi and picks you up the next morning?). This combined with the winter darkness and the fact that the two girls I knew here both fled the country wasn’t helping.
I started to look around for things to do. I joined FutureShifters, where I met Claire, the CEO of Lucca Leadership Australia, whom I’ve now met in person and am doing part time marketing development for. I started going to Shabbat dinner, where I had my Bar Mitzvah and met some great people. And then today, I changed my life.
This summer I found out that I’d been accepted to Cornell Tradition, a service scholarship that awards you some cash towards your tuition as well as $3,500 to be used for volunteering abroad. I’d been thinking of using that money to go to Kenya to visit Mbaka Oromo Primary School, the school BOLD helped raise money to install solar panels into, and maybe climb Mt. Kilimanjaro while I was in the neighborhood. This would mean not swimming next year, which was a step I was unsure I wanted to take, so I’d just been thinking about this for now and was going to make up my mind when I got back to campus.
This all changed when I saw this. I was on the Cornell World Changers network when I saw this link. In a flash it clicked. If he can do it, why can’t I?
For those of you who didn’t click on the link, it’s story about how Seth Cochran, Cornell ‘00, raised $40,000 for cleft palate surgeries by climbing up Mt. Kilimanjaro. Here’s the full story.
The epiphany whirled through me. The more I thought about it, the more excited I got. Quickly, I looked Seth up on the CU database, found his email and sent him my plan. He replied in five minutes from Berlin.
Seth was really excited to hear from me. He suggested that I climb to raise money for OperationOF, the new charity he has set up. OperationOf empowers women with Obstetric Fistula, a medical condition women in which a fistula (or hole) develops between the rectum and vagina or between the bladder and vagina during labor, causing continuous leakage of urine and stool henceforth.
This leads to the young women and girls being excommunicated from their villages and forced to beg in order to survive.
It can be prevented.
OperationOF pays for their surgeries and counseling, then offer entrepreneurial based training and a microloan for support. Two to three million women live with OF today.
I agreed to support OperationOF largely because Seth had started it, and I felt that because he had inspired me to begin this journey, it was only fitting. However, the more I read about this, the more I believe in it as well.
Imagine being unable to control when you go to the bathroom, loosing everyone you love and being forced to beg to survive. The thought of the smell alone makes me sick.
So here I am. 179 days from the approximate start of my climb on January 10th. My goal, our goal, is to raise $25,ooo towards OperationOF.
As outlandish as this is, I feel as though it’s what I’m meant to do. The events last 6 months, two years, twenty years, have all led to this path and I feel confident and capable, nervous and excited.
Right now, I’m reading Richard Branson’s Autobiography, Loosing My Virginity. In the prologue he talks about why his philosophy on business and on life. It reads:
‘Screw it. Let’s do it.’
Wish me luck.