About ten years ago, a guy named Dean Potter and a friend, Graham Hunt, put on their wingsuits and jumped off a cliff. The wingsuits enabled them to soar in flying squirrel fashion. Potter, age forty-three, and Hunt, twenty-nine, were experienced BASE jumpers. The acronym stands for Building, Antenna, Span, and Earth, the locations jumpers jump from.
Both Potter and Hunt were expert jumpers, but Potter broke the record in 2009 for the longest BASE jump, at two minutes and fifty seconds, after jumping from Eiger North Face in Switzerland. By accomplishing this feat, he earned the title of Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic magazine.
Newspaper and online accounts disclose that Potter would sometimes carry his furry friend, Whisper, on jumps and paraglides, which riled the PETA people and dog lovers everywhere. BASE jumpers, as well as some pooches, live dangerously, but they do follow safety protocol by wearing a parachute.
In 2015, Potter, minus Whisper but with Hunt, jumped from Taft Point at Yosemite National Park and attempted to fly through an opening in a ridge. Both men missed their target and slammed into the rocks at about a hundred miles per hour. Their chutes were not deployed, and neither of the jumpers survived.
I ran across a clipping of this story in my folder of interesting articles, and I thought of how dangerously these two men lived their lives and how safely I live mine. If Potter and Hunt were pursuing their pastimes today, they would be deciding which mountain or skyscraper to leap from, while I am deciding which words to use in a sentence.
Whether or not Potter and Hunt were good decision makers is debatable, due to our personal opinions and perspectives coming into play. Some would say they made all the right decisions because they followed their hearts' desires. Others would disagree because the last actions claimed their lives.
Potter and Hunt were risk takers; they were not scared of making decisions. For some of us who are not as brave, decisions are sometimes hard to make, and taking the next step can be intimidating.
If I may be self-disclosing, I admit to procrastinating when decision time comes. I analyze too much and ask too many what ifs. "Balancing head and heart is key to making the 'right' decision," says Dr. Michele DeMarco, and she lists ten steps for making decisions that will not be regretted. One of those steps is to consider the consequences of each action. Easier said than done, I say. All the variables, possible outcomes and consequences are not forseeable in every case. We cannot predict the future.
As a writer, I make a multitude of decisions every day, from the tiniest (whether to use a comma or a semicolon), to bigger ones (whether to self-publish or try traditional, or whether to publish at all). Knowing someone else's story and being aware of their bavery can strengthen another's will. If so-and-so did it, I can, too.
Potter and Hunt probably inspired BASE jumpers around the world to fly from tall buildings, etc., but dangerous acts such as those do not inspire me. I have no intentions of springing from a mountain or the Empire State Building. But I do have one takeaway from their story: the next time I have a tough decision to make, I need to lighten up, because there's not a snowball's chance in Hades that I'll be jumping off a cliff.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Be kind in word and thought.