Reinhold Messner is one of the most famous mountaineers of all time.  The Italian born Messner (he was born in the German speaking region of Italy) was the first person to solo climb Mt. Everest as well as the first person to climb all fourteen of the 8,000 meter peaks, the world's highest, without supplemental oxygen.  He is admired, even revered, among his fellow mountaineers for his legendary exploits.

    Messner will be seventy-nine this year.  Yet one often wonders exactly what, amidst his many alpine adventures, Messner found.  In a recent interview, Messner remarked that, "Life is absurd, but you can fill it with ideas, enthusiasm, and joy."  Here is a person who, perhaps more than most, filled his days with immensely impressive physical and mental achievements.  Yet he insists that life, the life with which he has filled with much enthusiasm and joy, along with a plethora of ideas, is absurd.

     I struggle to reconcile such talk with what appears to be a clear zeal for existence.  And I marvel, once again, at how much this extraordinary paradox says about the necessity of a personal transcendence in grounding our picture of reality.