If you have a high-way on Everest, you don't meet the mountain. If everything is prepared, and you have a guide who is responsible for your security, you cannot meet the mountain. Meeting mountains is only possible if you . . . are out there in self-sufficiency.
Interpretation
True courage comes from facing challenges independently, not solely relying on external preparation.
This quote by Reinhold Messner emphasizes that to truly encounter and overcome significant challenges, like climbing a mountain, one must rely on their own inner strength and self-sufficiency. Preparedness and guidance can help, but the real test lies in facing the difficulties head-on without complete dependence on external resources.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience and facing fears.
I became famous for the fact that I would break many, many limits. People said, 'He does all these crazy things.' But oddly it was a crazy thing only because scientists and climbers said, 'Everest and the 8,000-meter peaks without oxygen - impossible. Messner is becoming sick in his head.'
A 30-year-old rock climber is an old man. At 40, one is in the middle of his high-altitude power. At 50, a crosser of deserts is at his best age. But at 60, each of us is out of the game.
I think my cultural work is more important than the adventures I did. The adventures are not important for human beings. It's the conquering of the useless.
In mountaineering, there is not only the activity, but the philosophy behind it. Some say a moral, but I am against that because all morality is dangerous.
I was the first man to climb the world's 14 tallest peaks without supplementary oxygen, but I never asked how high I would go, just how I would do it.
In my state of spiritual abstraction, I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits.
Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion, to greatness.
Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees.
Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
To see and know the worst is to take from Fear her main advantage.
We say Fine, even though we may be dying, and this is commonly known as taking one's courage in both hands, a phenomenon that has only been observed in the human species.
I'm not afraid to look like an idiot on TV.
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