Robin Williams used to joke that using cocaine was God’s way of telling you
you’re making too much money.
An obsession with climbing Mount Everest might
be another indication.
Pursuing world records so obscure that only you and a
few others even know about them might be yet another symptom.
There have been 207 deaths on Everest about one fatality for every 10
successful summits since efforts to scale the mountain were first recorded
in 1922, not to mention probably thousands of fingers and toes lost to
frostbite.
Yet people, often hard-charging businesspeople in search of a new
achievement-fix, keep signing up to give Everest a try. For this they plunk
down a minimum of $10,000 for a climbing permit and tens of thousands more
dollars for airfare, equipment, oxygen, Sherpas, and several weeks of
lodging in the Himalayas to acclimate as best they can before attempting a
climb that can’t be anything but agony.
.
