Mountains are the landscape's way of asking whether you are serious — every step costs something, the air thins as the view expands, and the top, when you reach it, is simply a better place to begin the descent. Nasreddin climbed hills and looked down on his village with a mixture of affection and relief that it was down there and he was up here, which is the appropriate relationship between the examined and the examining life. The summit's gift is not the view; it is the proportion.
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