A courageous young woman from Orange County who has risked the climb of mount Everest, said this week that she realizes her country now faces an uphill climb from a pathogenic pandemic that is higher than any mountain she’s ever climbed.
Sara Safari, a college professor from Irvine, was scheduled to speak in Los Alamitos last month. She was set to appear with Los Alamitos’ social entrepreneur Jessica Ridgeway of African Sisterhood, before their event was sidetracked by the pandemic.
As a young girl, Sara endured the hardships of oppression in Iran, enabling her as an adult immigrant to the United States to use freedom to vault herself into one of the most promising motivational speakers in the world.
“When you climb a mountain, the mountaineers can be from different countries,” she said. “they may speak different languages, have different ethnic backgrounds, and we all get attached to the same safety rope.” It’s much like the situation Americans find themselves in today, Safari said.
“If one person’s life falls in danger, everyone on that rope faces danger as well,” she said.
“We are now in circumstances where we should, with our collective might, realize that we are all connected and we should work with each other so we can all reach the summit together.”
Growing up in Iran, Safari said she “had experienced firsthand the oppressive, restrictive environment that makes gender discrimination possible.” She often speaks about and raises money for victims of human trafficking in Nepal.
Safari emigrated to the United States from Iran in 2002. She received her degree in electrical engineering from UCLA before going to work for a large company, after which she became “utterly miserable.”
“One day at a seminar, a speaker suggested we think of a project that seemed impossible, and to commit to doing it,” said Safari. “Someone behind me whispered something about trekking to the Mount Everest base camp and before I knew it, I shouted out, ‘I am going to climb Mount Everest.’”
“I was a typical California girl who had never slept in a tent before and hated cold weather,” she said. But Safari had committed herself to climbing the Everest and she was going to do it.
To date, Safari has climbed to sit atop six of the ‘Seven Summits’, the highest peaks on the seven continents with and she did this all raising awareness and funds for organizations that empower women around the world. The only remaining summit, Mount Everest’s ascend getting interrupted by Nepal’s 7.8 magnitude earthquake as Safari was climbing a ladder on an ice wall.
“The mountain and the ladder began to shake violently. The entire earth was shaking underneath us,” she said, noting that over 9,000 people were killed in surrounding towns and villages.
“I clung to the ladder as car-sized chunks of ice started toppling down around me. I was sure it was only a matter of time before one struck me.”
Safari struggled to breathe as she “began to choke on thick clouds of snow.” Unsure of her fate, Safari made it up the ladder to be eventually saved, along with her team, by the Nepalese helicopter rescuers.
“The defining moments along my journey thus far have caused me not to retreat, but instead, inspired me to expand my ultimate goal,” Safari said.
In her TEDx talk, Safari told her audience that her Everest adventure “has a kernel of truth for everyone. There are so many things that all of us are capable of.” Yet, despite that potential, she said, so many of us, are afraid to act unless we are coaxed out of our comfort zones to try something new and different.
“Currently, our country is in crisis. Not only our country, but people all over the world are dealing with similarly difficult times. In a crisis, the part of our brain that deals with our primary needs becomes active, and although we humans are social creatures, at these times all of our immediate focus is on our individual needs and we forget that we live in a society, and that only through cooperation, and properly helping and informing each other, we can be successful together, make progress and reach our goals.”
Safari added “Our current social isolation reminds me of the time I was stuck in a small tent during a storm on the mountain. It’s hard at first, but then you learn to adapt and wait for the storm to pass. If we focus on the blessings we have rather than what we don’t have, life becomes much better. So let’s promise ourselves to stay strong and keep hopeful.”
“Right now, we are climbing a different king of mountain, that of health and safety for the world.” said Safari. “It sounds like a huge mountain, higher than the highest peaks, but I know we can climb it, together, step by step.”
Safari is a professor teaching leadership at UCI, she is a public speaker, a published writer, an activist promoting women’s empowerment, and of course, always ready to climp a new mountain.
