Thursday, August 22, 2013

Observations from the Window 8.22

I wrote this a few days ago. I was catching up on magazines, but now have no idea where I was going with it. I'll just post it as is with a link to the complete article at the bottom.

Sometimes I'll read a whole magazine and have only one sentence or paragraph linger after I finish. That's what happened when I read The New York Times Magazine from a few weeks back. In an article about a French base jumper who had died I found the following words that ring true in more areas than base jumping.

"If you’re all tuned in, there’s ‘Yes,’" he said. "On the mediocre days, there are two other voices. One’s ‘Fear.’ Your body is screaming out at you, ‘Don’t do this,’ because it’s dangerous, unnatural. You’re there to conquer your fear. But there’s another voice that hangs around every now and again, and that’s called ‘No.’ Something’s not right. You can never put your finger on it, it could be something in your pack job, or the weather, or the people you’re jumping with, or your mind-set. It’s just, ‘Walk away, don’t go jumping today.’ The difficulty is trying to discern between ‘Fear’ and ‘No,’ because they’re both telling you the same thing. ‘No’ is your sixth sense that’s trying to save your life."

"It’s More Like a Suicide Than a Sport"