Forgetting, Dreaming and Climbing

“Finally, one of these broken men talks to Adam.  The man tells Adam about the flower of immortality at the top of the mountain.  Adam laughs and tells the man that he only seeks the summit, the challenge of climbing.  He has no need for a magic flower.  All his life he has answered to other people.  All his life he has been a servant to laws, traditions, wives, mothers, fathers, bosses, children and grandchildren.  Now he wants to carve the rest of his life out for himself.”  Inky moves on to sorting big chunks of wood and you begin digging a fire pit.
“Adam climbs the mountain for a week.  Each day he encounters one hundred people, all of them coming down.  Each day one of the hundred stops to talk.  The talkers all tell of the impossibility of getting the flower.  On the night of the seventh day of his climb, he knows the next day he will summit and swears to himself that he will get the flower.”