日期: 2006 年 8 月 14 日

关于这个问题人们都知道一个非常有名的答案，就是：“山在那里”，这是英国登山家马洛里的话。当时他在珠峰脚下，一个记者向他提出这个问题的时候，他一指珠峰，说出了这个著名的答案。这个答案确实够酷，可能也正因此而流传甚广。其实他在一次攀登珠峰的筹款会上给出过一个更加详尽，更加精彩的回答：

“The first question which you will ask and which I must try
to answer is this, ‘What is the use of climbing Mount
Everest ?’ and my answer must at once be, ‘It is no use’.
There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever.
Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human
body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn
our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation.
But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring
back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal
or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can
be planted with crops to raise food. It’s no use.

So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man
which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes
out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life
itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we
go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And
joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and
make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life.
That is what life means and what life is for.”
– George Leigh Mallory, 1922

起初也问了自己很多次，始终搞不清。从小就特别喜欢爬山，不知道为什么。后来对这个问题也失去了兴趣，想着不要问那么多，自己喜欢就去做好了。