That dread of looking into a calendar so overflowing that the obligations are scribbled all over each other. That thousand-tons awareness pressing down that it can’t all be done, at least not well.

You’ve anticipated this day. As your season wanes, ebbing into the uncharted change which lies ahead, the shoreline gives way to the first hints of ocean. You’ve become increasingly aware of both the loss of the known and the openness of the unexplored horizon before you.

“There were just people everywhere,” Ayisha Jessa, 31, a climber from London who recently visited Everest’s base camp, told BBC Magazine. At the nearby village of Namachi, she said, “It’s completely commercialized — everything is intended for the Western traveller.”

More than any other verse in the Bible, this one has preserved me through all kinds of seasons in life. It is still my retreat, my protection, and my reservoir of beauty. To my easily frazzled soul, torn by the many voices of responsibilities, this Scripture has become my oasis from where I sift through the demands from outside the garden, as well as my own loud emotions.