posh, are you going therapist on us now? i really like the question though. makes me think for a minute. and all the answers have been great! deeper than i suspected. but i can see the truth in all of them. i think for myself it is a combination of these things but 95% is the pursuit. and i think a lot of men are like that. they do it because it is there. it is in our nature. its why Sir Edmund Hillary climbed Mount Everest. and the later was quoted as saying ''It's not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves"