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.
Interpretation
The essence of cultural work outweighs personal adventures as it contributes more profoundly to humanity.
Reinhold Messner emphasizes the significance of cultural contributions over personal adventures, suggesting that the work one does to enrich culture and society is of greater value than individual experiences. He posits that true achievement lies in overcoming trivial pursuits and fostering meaningful development that benefits humanity as a whole.
In practice
In a discussion about priorities in life, one might quote Messner to stress the importance of contributing to society over personal gains.
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.
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.
I go to the mountains for an adventure and each time I pray I will get up and down again.
I learn with great concern that [one] portion of our frontier so interesting, so important, and so exposed, should be so entirely unprovided with common fire-arms. I did not suppose any part of the United States so destitute of what is considered as among the first necessaries of a farm-house.
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society.
Faith is a mockery if it does not teach us that we can build a more complete and beautiful world.
We find by losing. We hold fast by letting go. We become something new by ceasing to be something old. This seems to be close to the heart of that mystery. I know no more now than I ever did about the far side of death as the last letting-go of all, but now I know that I do not need to know, and that I do not need to be afraid of not knowing. God knows. That is all that matters.
The secret story is the one we'll never know, although we're living it from day to day, thinking we're alive, thinking we've got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn't matter.
The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale.
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