And the joy is not in reaching, the joy is in making the effort, the arduous effort, the dangerous effort. Once you have reached you will have to find a new excuse; otherwise that will be your grave, that will be suicidal.

When Zarathustra says, “I am a wanderer and a mountain climber,” he is saying something about you all. He is saying something about the very human spirit.

I do not like the plains and it seems I cannot sit still for long.
And whatever may yet come to me as fate and experience – a wandering and a mountain-climbing will be in it.

I will not accept any other destiny, because any other destiny will be nothing but death. I will accept the destiny only if wandering and mountain climbing are part of it, if my wandering continues and new mountains and higher mountains and farther-away stars are still available to me.

In the final analysis, one experiences only oneself.

As you go on searching for truth, searching for God, searching for meaning…these are all different names because you cannot go on simply searching for nothing. That needs a totally different insight.

If you understand that wandering in itself is the goal, that there is no goal for which the wandering exists – all goals exist for wandering; wandering itself is the goal – then you need not even have goals. You need not even bother about meaning, about truth, about God; you can go on searching.

But it may be a little difficult. And it will look a little irrational if somebody asks you, “What are you searching for?” If you cannot answer him, and if you simply say, “I am only a pure searcher, it does not matter what….” Not to feel embarrassed, you choose any name: you are searching for liberation, you are searching for enlightenment, you are searching for the ultimate truth – beautiful words, and very satisfying to the person who is asking you the question. Neither he is embarrassed nor you are embarrassed.

But in all this wandering, in all this searching, in all this mountain climbing, what do you find? Zarathustra says: you find only yourself.

Of course, if you have not wandered, perhaps you may not have found yourself – because all those ecstasies, all those new spaces that you come across help you to discover yourself. Slowly, slowly it dawns upon you that all goals are just excuses.

I am nothing but a longing, a desire for the impossible.

This is knowing oneself – the desire for the impossible.