The Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia is one of the largest sand deserts in the world and contains dunes that are hundreds of feet high. In between those sand mountains, you frequently encounter large ripples in the wind blown sand called sastrugi. During one of our trips into the Empty Quarter we created a new motto, “SASTRUGI HAPPENS.”
Sastrugi comes in different forms. Sometimes the ripples take the form of tiny corrugations that cause the car to shake and rattle as you drive over them. At other times the ripples take the form of large corrugations that may be eight to twelve inches tall. These corrugations can be very hard, but they can also be soft like quicksand. It’s impossible to look at sastrugi from a distance and tell its consistency. It could be as hard as a rock or as soft as quicksand.
When you drive through sastrugi, you never know ahead of time what will happen. Your car may shake violently as you drive over large hard sastrugi, or you may come to an abrupt stop as your car sinks down to the chassis in soft sand. The reality of the sand dunes is that SASTRUGI HAPPENS.
When you drive in the sand dunes, you prepare for the sastrugi that lies ahead. And when you travel through life, you must also prepare for the sastrugi that is certain to occur.
Driving in hard sastrugi at a high speed is traumatic. It makes both your car and your teeth rattle. Loose articles in the car become dislodged and fly around. The car feels and sounds like it’s coming apart. Hitting a big patch of hard sastrugi at high speed is a bit of a worry.
After you get through it, you get out of your car and check your vehicle to make sure it’s OK. It usually takes a few minutes to recover from the look your spouse gave you as you raced over the hard sastrugi.
Some people hit a big patch of hard sastrugi on their first trip into the desert, and they never go out into the sand dunes again. You would have thought that they had driven over a land mine. They are afraid that the sastrugi will destroy their car. They visualize disaster in their minds. They fantasize that the shock of hitting hard sastrugi will damage their steering, and their car will be stuck in the desert forever. A large patch of hard sastrugi keeps some people safe at home for the rest of their life.
You don’t have to be in the desert for sastrugi to happen. Life is full of hard sastrugi, and it happens all the time. Sastrugi traumatizes people in the workplace and in their personal life. They go through periods when they feel as if they are being severely hammered by the sastrugi of life. After taking this punishment, they withdraw, and instead of saying yes to life, they say no. They don’t want to experience any more hard sastrugi.
They go home, sit in their easy chair, watch television, read the newspaper, and watch life pass them by. The sastrugi of life traumatized them, and they don’t want to get hurt anymore. They don’t understand that sastrugi is simply one of the challenges of life, and a challenge is only a challenge until you learn how to deal with it. There are ways of dealing with sastrugi without getting hurt, and once you learn how to deal with it, sastrugi no longer is a problem.
Soft sastrugi is also like life.
In the sand valleys at the base of the dunes, you encounter areas of sastrugi that is as soft as shallow quicksand. Soft sastrugi stops you dead in your tracks. Your vehicle sinks until the chassis touches the sand when soft sastrugi happens.
Sastrugi is tricky. When you come to a patch of it, you never know if it will be soft or hard. The only way you can tell is to drive through it.
If you think it’s soft, you put your foot on the accelerator in order to blast your way through it at high speed.
If you think it’s hard, you put your foot on the brakes and slow down so that your car won’t shake apart as your tires bounce on the crests of the hard sastrugi.
Many times I have slowed down when I thought that I was coming to a patch of hard sastrugi. Unfortunately, I entered a sea of sand at a slow speed, and I quickly learned the error of my ways as my car sunk down to the chassis in the soft sand. I was sincerely and monumentally stuck in deep sand. Soft sastrugi happens.
Being deeply mired in soft sastrugi is only an embarrassment unless you decide to stay stuck for the rest of your life. If you stay stuck, the rest of your life won’t be that long because you will die of thirst. Smart people don’t stay stuck, and they don’t sit around waiting to die. They get out of their car and reduce the air pressure in their tires to fifteen pounds per square inch. They use shovels to dig the sand out from under the car where it touches the chassis and axle. Next, they put metal sand ladders under the tires. Then, the driver puts the car in low gear and drives out of the sastrugi with everyone pushing. In ten minutes, you are free from your sandy prison and on your way. Only a fool would die of thirst trapped in soft sastrugi.
Life has a great deal of soft sastrugi. Many times it stops you in your tracks as you become mired down in difficulty. At that point, you have a choice. You can throw in the towel and surrender remaining perpetually mired in the problems of life. You can sit there feeling sorry for yourself, thinking up dozens of reasons why you will never overcome your problems. The other choice is to deal with your problems and get going again.
Everyone occasionally becomes stuck soft sastrugi. It’s not your fault when you bog down, but staying stuck is your fault. When you bog down with problems, it’s not the time to surrender. Instead, you take immediate action. You get out the shovels and sand ladders, you lower the air pressure in your tires, you get your friends to start pushing, and you start driving. Soon, the soft sastrugi is in your rear view mirror. Although soft sastrugi happens, you don’t need to be permanently immobilized by it.
You are going to experience a great deal of hard and soft sastrugi in your life. When sastrugi happens, you can be traumatized by it, or you can get stuck in it, but the smartest thing to do is drive around it.
Careful drivers keep a sharp lookout for sastrugi. You can usually see it in the distance and avoid it. Ninety-five percent of the time, a good driver sees sastrugi ahead of time and drives around it. Five percent of the time, even the best driver will be traumatized by hard sastrugi or immobilized by soft sastrugi. The only way to completely avoid sastrugi is to stop driviing.
Ninety-five percent of the problems that you have in life can be avoided by keeping a sharp lookout, but five percent of your problems are unavoidable. Don’t become terminally traumatized or immobilized by the sastrugi of life. Be prepared to ride out the hard sastrugi and dig out of the soft sastrugi, because the only way to reach your dreams is to keep on driving.
Although sastrugi may be unpleasant, you should never fear it. People who are afraid of sastrugi are afraid of life. The Life Long Disoriented feel that the purpose of life is to avoid all sastrugi. They have gotten things backwards. Sastrugi happens because you are making a life. If you don’t have sastrugi in your life, it’s because you aren’t going anywhere or doing anything.
I have had a life full of sastrugi. Every challenge and every adventure was full of it. If you took all of the sastrugi out of my life, I would never have gone anywhere, and I would never have done anything.
I would never have gotten married. I would never have had children. I would never have performed ophthalmic surgery. I would never have driven my Land Rovers in the deserts of Arabia or the outback of Australia. I would never have sailed around the world on my sailboat. I would never have worked in Panama, Puerto Rico, Liberia, Kenya, or Saudi Arabia. I would have missed all of the great adventures of my life.
If you don’t have sastrugi in your life, you’re not taking large enough risks, and you’re not moving in the direction of your dreams.
Sastrugi happens to everyone, and if you want to have an extraordinary life, you must become a master at handling hard and soft sastrugi.
When sastrugi happens, you must keep on keeping on. You must never quit, because you’re on the way to your dreams.
Excerpt from
Zero Tolerance To Negative Thinking
David J. Abbott M.D.
The unexpected side effect of our Arabian adventures was that I achieved escape velocity. Without even trying and without knowing what was happening, I no longer felt the pull of cultural gravity. I achieved escape velocity, I was free, and I made my life into what I wanted it to be. I was now a citizen of the world, and cultures were something to be experienced and enjoyed, but not something that controlled my existence.
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