All right. When you speak of lofty goals, I am guessing that you have an image of something like a mountain climber aiming for the top. YOUTH: Yes, that’s right. People, myself included, aim for the top of the mountain. PHILOSOPHER: But, if life were climbing a mountain in order to reach the top, then the greater part of life would end up being ‘en route’. That is to say, one’s ‘real life’ would begin with one’s trek on the mountainside, and the distance one has travelled up until that point would be a ‘tentative life’ led by a ‘tentative me’.
