I think the old man is the important piece of the picture. Our entire lives are spent climbing away from inescapable death. No matter what we do, a missed hand hold will eventually result in the fall into blackness. The old mans body is bound to fail him, and he will fall.

The thing I like most is the light that the subject of the painting is climbing towards. Sometimes, when I am in a situation where a negative outcome is unchangeable, I don't want to deal with it at all. why play the game of life when we all lose, sort of thing. I think the light is what makes it worth traversing the perils of the pit. I think the light is the things that make life worth living.

But I'm just some dude, and that's what I see. I think someone smarter will be able to tell me I'm wrong.

I believe the walls are closing in, and the guy is trying to climb out in time.

But the spikes don't have holes to go in, so they will prevent the walls from closing completely anyway.

Yes. As you progress forward to new points of stability, you lose contact with the previous ones. It feels like you’re accumulating things in life, but time is entropy’s ceaseless expansion, and the things you relied on before are behind you and possibly even occluded by so many other layers of things in your life.

You’re hoping to reach somewhere to stop, but all there are, are handholds spaced too far to drape yourself across two.

You can’t rest. You have to keep reaching and climbing. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.