1990. Saryagash, Southern Kazakhstan. I was nine years old when my parents brought me to a sanatorium to literally help me stand on my feet again — at some point, I had stopped walking.
It was lonely, bitter, and dull there. But eventually I found a friend with whom I shared one important mission. The gates of the resort symbolised the edge of the world for us, and every evening we would walk there to find freedom, to breathe the air of a different space — one beyond the sanatorium.
Those twilight journeys beyond the permitted boundaries promised us imminent liberation and the chance to transgress borders. We often speak of life as a journey — it is concise, beautiful, poetic. But few are ready to admit that this path rarely follows a well-trodden, comfortable trail.
More often it winds through fog, unstable crossings, and whirlpools of doubt. To truly move — upwards, inwards, forwards — rather than simply drifting with the current, one must venture beyond boundaries. Not the comfortable and familiar horizontal, but the vertical, alluring in its beauty and complexity.
Swimming beyond the buoys is one of its stages. Breaking the boundaries of what is permitted and familiar. It is there, beyond the line, that everything authentic begins.
When I first arrived in Antarctica, everything within me fell silent. The world was white, like a blank page before the first word. Antarctica is not merely the edge of the world — it is a mirror inside us, stripped of all blemishes, revealing our true motives.
The cold — honest to the point of pain, the wind — like a revelation, the ice mountains — a reminder that what truly matters grows in silence. This journey became a metaphor for me: beyond the comfortable begins the zone of growth. Not where it is warm, safe, and familiar, but where it is frightening, uncertain, unpredictable.
Where each step is the first. Many imagine success as a finish line: you have reached your desired goal and can exhale. But the truth is that success is not a reward but a continuation of movement.
It comes to those who can endure rejection, misunderstanding, loss, and yet continue — with a different rhythm, a new perspective, but with the same irrepressible fire within. In this issue, we have gathered stories of those who have crossed boundaries. Who risked, failed, rose.
And carried on. Who discovered new horizons within themselves. Here are polar explorers, philosophers, musicians, artists, entrepreneurs.
What unites them is not the form of success, but the courage to remain on the journey, despite the storm. Swim beyond the buoys. It is not only deeper there. It is where you truly are. — Lara Palmer, Founder & Editor-in-Chief