Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

~ Live & Learn

Why not just retire?

“Reinhold doesn’t really relax,” Hansjörg said.

“Do you know this saying he has on his website? ‘I am what I do.’ But I think he may also believe the opposite: ‘If I cease to do, I will not be.’

~ Caroline Alexander, on Reinhold Messner, “Murdering the Impossible. Superhumanly determined.” (National Geographic Magazine, November, 2006)

Reinhold Messner, 72, is an Italian mountaineer, adventurer, explorer, and author. He made the first ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen and was the first climber to ascend all fourteen peaks over 8,000 metres (26,000 ft) above sea level. He was also the first person to cross Antarctica and Greenland with neither snowmobiles nor dog sleds. He crossed the Gobi Desert alone.

Photo: gripped.com

22 thoughts on “Monday Morning Wake-Up Call”

  5. I propose a walk around the world for Mr. Messner. The logistics would be no challenge, but the politics and permissions required would surely equal or surpass the efforts of all the mountains physically climbed, ice fields traversed. He is an amazing person for what he’s done, regardless of how he choses to further be!

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  8. It’s a hard decision to make, to retire or not to retire. Sometimes it’s made for us by illness or management or the law (age), but I think, as far as possible, a person should be enjoying life in many ways alongside the working life, following other interests besides “love for his job.” Then when he retires, he can spend productive time enjoying things he’s passionate about, whether it be hobbies, or vocations (and maybe vacations too), or volunteering in social endeavours. That way life is not over when “the job” ends.

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  9. How do we spend our remaining days on earth? I think our Western Society is so driven by doing that it is hard for the soul to rest…I trust that life has always filled in and if i stop what i am presently doing I will be on to the next adventure!

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    1. Smiling. Susanna, your comment reminds me of:

      We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they’re not nearly fast enough, not for us, we’re way ahead of them, they’ll never catch up. That’s why we can go so fast: our souls don’t weigh us down.

      ~ Margaret Atwood, “Faster”, from The Tent (Anchor, May 8, 2007) (via Alive on All Channels)

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