A few weeks ago, I wrote about When your Best Days are Behind You. It talks about the feeling when you feel that your glory days are gone, and it will never come back.

That was obviously what happened to Yuichiro Miura. After becoming the first person to ski Mount Everest at the age of 37 in 1970, he retired in 1993. For five years after that, he spent five lazy years just lazing around. Then he had an epiphany. ” I was only talking about my past, not my future. I wanted to challenge my dreams again.”

In 2003, at the age of 70, after five years of practice starting when he was 65, he became the oldest person to climb the roof of the world. He has another plan - to ascend Mt. Everest in 2008 at the age of 75. ” I figured if I have to die in a hospital, I might as well die on Everest.”

When you have a dream, when you have something to look forward to, when you have something to accomplish — that my friends, is the vigor that makes you want to wake up every morning, and is greatest feeling you can ever give yourself.

Do not put all your eggs into the dream that you will be happy when you get there. Put your happiness on the enjoyment of the trip in getting there.

I once envied an industrialist who have made billions. Then I meet him in one of the functions. He was 76. He looked old, and tired. He looked like something who badly needed a rest, but unfortunately he couldn’t. His company needed him to accomplish another record year of sales. I don’t know if he enjoyed his wealth, but definitely it did not show.

And I figured he is thinking probably he has only a few more years to live, and then I had a thought. I was willing to bet, that he would willingly exchange his wealth and age, for MY wealth and age. Because — it was the journey that rewards, not the destination.

If he, after fighting all his battles, and making it, would willingly change his place with me, then what was in him that I was yearning for?

I had the future, and the challenge ( and something to look forward to0 — he had only the wealth, his failing health and the memories to move him. Who have more to be happy about?