I have done a good bit of thrill seeking adventures and sports. I spent years rock climbing, mostly indoors but occasionally outdoors. I played a year of bench warming football. I’ve sky dived, hang glided, and spent years skiing fairly aggressively.
Looking back, I question why I ever did it. Sometimes there would be a thrilling high, but much more often I was just terrified and trying to survive.
Maybe I did it to try to prove something to someone else or myself, or in the hopes of getting an adrenaline high, or just because it became habitual.
We are all just bags of meat and bone. Injuries usually last a lifetime when they are serious. Death is possible, and no one really remembers the dead after their gone and the dead don’t enjoy the game anyways. A thirty seconds spurt of adrenaline induced joy is never worth years of pain and aches. We are simply bags of chemicals and you can get just as much of a high by doing a hard run or indoor bike ride as you can from skydiving.
I think my grandfather, who I idolized, himself idolized risk seekers and so that desire rubbed off on me early and I didn’t think about it.
I was extremely fortunate never to suffer a serious injury. The worst I had came after my youth was gone when I tried rollerblading again in my early thirties. That injury put me in the hospital for two weeks and likely induced osteoarthritis in my hips.
My recommendation to my children is going to be to just do safe sports that give you a great runners high, but don’t put you at risk of death. Track, cross country, indoor cycling, and tennis are all great sports for this. Sports like basketball and soccer are maybes. Hard no on rodeo, football, and martial arts.
Life is full of unavoidable risks like driving or flying or just ordinary accidents. Why seek to add to that unnecessarily?
I am having the most fun of my life and am in the best shape of my life simply riding my stationary bike in Zwift races… I get my heart rate the highest it’s ever been , do huge sprints, get a runner’s high, compete against other people to my physical limit, and socialize with people all over the world via Discord.