I was always at my best when I was learning, when I was curious.

In the councils of the old mountain sages, it was said that a soul grows strongest while its eyes are wide and its pack is light. Thus Reinhold Messner’s confession—“I was always at my best when I was learning, when I was curious. When I had yet to see past the next horizon.”—rings like a bell in thin air. He speaks the law of ascent: the moment we believe we have seen it all, the climb within us falters; the moment we hunger to know, our legs and lungs remember their purpose. For the heart that keeps a student’s posture, even the sky becomes a schoolroom.

Messner’s image of the horizon is no mere poet’s flourish; it is the moving edge between what is known and what calls us forward. The learning mind walks to that edge and refuses to pitch a permanent camp. To be curious is to live with a pack of questions, to accept that the world is larger than our maps, that skill ripens only under weather and wonder. This is why he ties his best self to study rather than victory; triumph can tempt us to sleep, but inquiry keeps the fire alive.

Consider a tale from his own life. In 1978, alongside Peter Habeler, Messner reached the summit of Everest without supplemental oxygen—a feat many called impossible, a wall too high for human breath. He approached it not as a boast but as an experiment in learning: How does the body adapt? What rhythms of step and breath make the death zone survivable? In 1980 he returned alone, a solitary thread stitching the mountain’s vast face. These were not stunts; they were lessons taken in the harshest classroom on earth. Curiosity—disciplined, prepared, unafraid to be small—opened doors that strength alone could not.

The ancients would name this the pilgrim’s advantage. A pilgrim is not blinded by arrival; he watches the road. When the next horizon is hidden by storm, he leans into a question rather than into pride. Messner’s wisdom is the same: the climber who believes he has seen all routes grows careless; the one who remains curious checks the anchors twice, reads the snow’s hidden grammar, hears the whisper of the wind as instruction. In valleys and offices, studios and farms, the rule holds: mastery is the child of unending learning.

Yet the saying carries a softer mercy. To be at our best “when I had yet to see past the next horizon” is to bless uncertainty. It tells us that not knowing is not a shame but a strength, for it keeps us awake. The unknown humbles us into attention: we listen better, we prepare more honestly, we travel lighter. The ego loves vistas; the spirit loves paths. And the path belongs to those who keep asking, who let wonder pull them by the hand even when the map runs out.

From this, take a clear lesson: Protect the posture of the beginner, even in rooms where you are called expert. Build a life where questions outnumber trophies, where every summit is treated as a lookout, not a throne. Hold your plans, but hold your curiosity tighter. Let the next horizon be an invitation, not a threat. For in the silence before a new attempt—in the laboratory, the rehearsal hall, the workshop, the pre-dawn trail—the soul becomes keen, and gifts that were dull begin to gleam.

Now, practical steps for travelers of any terrain: 1) Each week, step into a task that makes you a novice again—an instrument, a language, a craft. 2) Keep a “field journal” of learning—what failed, what surprised, what changed your route. 3) Seek mentors and also apprentice yourself to the mountain itself: read the conditions, test assumptions, measure twice. 4) Trade some consuming for creating—turn what you learn into a sketch, a model, a paragraph, a prototype. 5) When you feel certainty harden, go walking until a new horizon appears. Do these, and you will find, like Messner, that your best self waits where the trail bends, where the air thins, and where curiosity goes first.