When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are, you almost never make it.  And even if you do it’s a hollow victory.  In order to sustain the victory, you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, and again and again and again, driving forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true and someone will find out.  That is not the way.

From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig