The Art of Risk or Shaken not Stirred
Peering into my car window, was like stumbling upon the remnants of a careless teenage night hidden in bushes, once cocooned by blackness but now obvious and bare for all to see. Two airbags limp, like used condoms once protecting, broken glass and CDs strewn across the scene, the sense of guilt and mischievousness still lingering in the air.
I retrieved my Stephen Fry CD and a shoe.
Rewind 48 hours.
"What a fucking nightmare" I was thinking to myself, rummaging around in the smoky, dimly lit interior of my car, bare knees on glass, trying to straighten my mind out and orientate. Disbelief at the suddenness of the changed situation.
I was having difficulty locating the door handle, as I was on the ceiling of my overturned car, it took me maybe half a minute to actually find it, then thrust open the door, which luckily wasn't jammed, and crawl out.
As is often the case, a chain of causality had unfolded, ending a late night drive home, just 100m from my house.
Going back many years, driving through the Karoo, from Cape Town to Durban, my brother and me on the rear seats, just young kids of eight or nine. We were towing a caravan. A straight road stretched ahead. Following a lorry which was transporting a huge corrugated metal pipe large enough to roll an elephant through. Suddenly the said cargo detached, flew towards us. Dad swerved, pipe met caravan and ripped open the side, we ended in the road-side ditch, unhurt. Dad was livid, Mum in shock, brother and I excited, too young to realise what could have been lost.
I started body-boarding aged ten after a brief stint learning to wave ski on my dad's old ski.
The ocean holds many dangers hidden in all the excitement of surfing, jelly fish stings being the smallest concern and a regular occurrence. Actually I once stood on a transparent blob lying on the beach, out of curiosity and ignorance, only to have it's poison travel up my leg to my groin, excruciating.
After moving up coast, 20km north of Durban to Umhlanga, the nearest surf spot was Umhlanga Rocks. A lot less tame than Durban itself, not protected by harbour and shape, no swimming here, just surfing. My father accompanied me out to sea the first time there and it wasn't long and I was caught up in a strong side current.
Trapped between skin tearing rocks and crushing waves 200m off shore, panic was close, luckily so was my dad. I can not recall if he was on his wave ski or swam out, but I'm sure he had his leather Clark's sandals on (did he ever take them off?).
He proceeded to pull me out of the situation only to be stuck there himself, requiring the assistance
of the lifeguards to extract him. An excellent swimmer and a brave man my Dad is.
Needless to say my dad never visited the place again to surf! I on the other hand seemed unstirred and spent the rest of my surfing life there.
Sharks; only met one once, a small hammer head, two maybe three meters long, circling in the oncoming swell. I panicked, swam for my life towards the safety of golden sands, threw my board even, maybe to avoid being mistaken for a turtle or to swim faster. My recounting of the story at home wasn't taken seriously, a bit like if I had claimed I had strangled a crocodile single handedly. Newspaper headlines the following day were warning of schools of hammerhead sharks travelling down-coast, and swimming was prohibited along the coast for the following days.
South Africa as a child was truly exiting.
Tweny-five years later on the other side of the Indian Ocean, I swam for my life again, albeit not from a shark, but from a current which was ripping me out to sea, sun already close to it's aquatic plunge. Alone aside from my then wife waiting on the deserted beach below the cliffs of Varkela in Kerala India, oblivious to my struggle.
I reached the beach, just, lucky to be alive, unable to lift my arms, so exhausted I was.
During the last 25 years, I've been mountain biking (snapping frames and collarbone), snowboarding (narrowly avoiding being buried in avalanches twice), ice climbing, rock climbing, paragliding since five years (just missing falling into my wing, nearly breaking my neck on a bad landing, broken back and as a beginner luckily recovered from a deep spiral seconds before blackout) and driving (frontal collision in tree as a passenger and overturning my car in a hard corner).
Risk has been a conscious part of my life since I can remember. Sometimes I have taken risks and sometimes risks have taken me.
For some reason my paragliding accident affected me a lot more than previous cases. Exactly as to why, I am unsure. Landing is unavoidable though, so it was either stop or deal with it.
For sure I had only been flying less than a year, and as usual for me, I was in love with it, obsessed even. It tainted my relationship, ripped off my pink glasses and brought me down to earth(no pun intended).
I've asked myself what the reason is for taking risks, why do I take them, is risk too big a risk?
Where is the balance, the sweet spot, between living and just existing?
In life there are a multitude of risks including: smoking, unhealthy foods, driving, hereditary diseases, freak accidents, psychopaths and stalkers, lightning, love, shark attacks, being murdered, and being trampled to death by a herd of cows.
Can there be true excitement and true pleasure without a risk?
Isn't risk just the threat of something being taken away from you, something lost? Is every step towards pleasure and happiness accompanied with a risk of losing exactly what you were trying to gain?
So maybe the question is, what are you willing to lose in the pursuit of being happy?
Maybe it's the immediacy of risk in sports like rock climbing and paragliding that make it more obvious. But the rewards are also immediate.
Oddly the risk of death is the risk we should least fear. I won't be here to be pissed off about having died, it will be like before I was born, no subjective feelings, nothingness.
Obviously it would cause my loved ones and close friends a great deal of pain, but it would also cause them anguish if I were to lead an unhappy and unfulfilled life.
I find it paradoxical that the older one gets the less willing one is to take risks, even though you have less life ahead of you. It would be more logical to be less risk-taking as a young man and more risk-taking as an old man (although there is obviously an evolutionary reason for it not being so)
Maybe unconsciously I'm thinking, "stop now, you've taken so many risks and gotten away with it, why carry on". (Un)fortunately I still have some unfinished dreams, and I would feel disappointed if I never got around to living them.
The things I love to do just happen to be inherently risky. I can't change that.
And if I stopped doing the things I love to do, then I'm not me any more.
Sometimes it feels like I want to prove something even if just to myself, but so what? A lot of people want to prove something to themselves.
Some people are workaholics and risk their health and their families to make money.
At least I can say I stay healthy doing my sports even if there is a considerable risk involved.
And I've learned so much about myself, about where my limits are and how precious life is.
And being an atheist has made me realise that there is only now, only this go.
What a waste it would be to avoid experiencing myself as living part of this marvellous thing called life.
So don't waste your time trying to survive life, or hoping there will be a heaven waiting for you.
Now is all there is, all we will get and all we need.
