Obsession to return
A life without one looks an empty-bucket, shadowy, wasted passage to me. Breathing, digesting, and occasionally reproducing for three score and ten without an irrational passion is an entirely predictable, pointless nil-all draw. Why bother?
Some people jump out of planes with nothing more than a modified pillow between them and the prospect of returning to Earth as raspberry yoghurt. Others climb frozen, oxygen-scarce mountains for no reason other than their towering presence. This particular obsession has, in recent weeks, cost at least 10 lives on Everest. The uncertainty about the toll remains because, even in equal-opportunities 2012, the loss of a sherpa is not considered the calamity represented by the death of a great white climber.
