The Ultimate Metaphor

I often say that the ultimate metaphor for life is climbing a mountain. Do I have this completely backwards? Maybe there is no adequate metaphor for life other than itself. If you can push your goals to the limits of your resources and ambition, life's long long lessons will more than adequately prepare you for any challenge you will find on the side of a mountain. Having just finished a project that took 10 hard years to finish, I look at the ongoing projects within which I am still engulfed with no end in sight until surely my hair is gray. Climbs last a few days, a few weeks, even months. How can a mountain possibly be a large enough measuring stick with which to measure the realities of life?
~Adam