Einstein was a great advocate of the notion that good ideas look absurd at the beginning. Camus expressed a similar view.
It's a consoling notion that death is a very tiny hole, and you need to make yourself very small to get through it. One obviously needs to lighten off, and a rucksack full of bricks or a mantelpiece full of trophies will certainly have to be abandoned - the sooner the better, I say.
Pursuit is a rather desperate act in itself. There's something kind of frantic about the notion of pursuit.