For years I was a rock climber and nothing else. I went to school, yes, and university, yes, but in my heart I was a rock climber.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the deep passion and commitment one can have towards a pursuit, illustrating how it defines their identity.
Reinhold Messner expresses how rock climbing was not just an activity for him, but a central part of his identity and life purpose. Despite attending school and university, his true self was tied to the mountains, showcasing the idea that one's passions can shape who they truly are.
In practice
In a motivational speech about following one's passion.
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.
It's not what you do. It's the way you do it-stripping, or writing, or talking . . . or just breathing. Do it with an air, and never admit you're scared.
I'm looking to no man walking this earth for approval of what I'm doing.
We rarely get to prepare ourselves in meadows or on graveled walks; we do it on short notice in places without windows, hospital corridors, rooms like this lounge with its cracked plastic sofa and Cinzano ashtrays, where the cafe curtains cover blank concrete. In rooms like this, with so little time, we prepare our gestures, get them by heart so we can do them when we're frightened in the face of Doom.
To break a Navy Seal, you have to kill us. That's why we can make it into our training. That's why we can call ourselves Seals because the only way your gonna break us is to kill us.
People have got to get together and work together. I'm tired of the kind of oppression that white people have inflicted on us and are still trying to inflict.
The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those youβre going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins.
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