Can You Risk It and Still Last?

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So, it’s a new May, and that means it’s time for more videos in our Mental Health Awareness Month Series. This is a series about the mental and emotional aspects of our climbing and adventures. In this video, I am talking about how an interview in a documentary of adventure athletes has lingered with me for seven years, now (as of this writing). I guess that makes it an impactful interview.

The particular interview was of Steph Davis, climber, windsuiter, BASE jumber, and general bad ass. The quote is about how conflating risk as the proxy of success is a self-defeating paradigm. She chooses to reject that paradigm. Of course, her own story is touched by tragedy, when she lost her husband in a wingsuit accident. So, on the one hand, we could say she was biased. But, on the other hand, could we say she was touched by the very experience many of us want to avoid. Does that make her voice more worth listening to, not less?

For me, the answer to that question is “yes.”

I don’t think her point is that any risky activity is inherently bad or self-defeating. I think her point is that if we say “the more dangerous the better,” that is when we’ve lost the plot. In that calculus, danger equals success; they are one in the same.

And while we can say (maybe a little more easily, but maybe not) that more risk does equate to general badass-ness, we are free to define success in any way we want. Success could mean fulfillment. Success could mean awe or exhilaration.

Success could mean longevity.

It might sound like “old guy” talk to say that doing something for a long time is a definition of success, but let’s play that out a bit. Let’s assume we enjoy our adventure sport. Let’s say we find it inherently meaningful and enjoyable. Why would we not want to be able to do that as long as possible?

But Jason, what if the fulfillment comes from the difficulty.

Okay, but does it have to be the most difficult. Because here’s the tradeoff: Even if we truly love climbing, there is more to life. There are other joys. A good joke, a close friend, a loving partner, making a difference in the world - and on and on - are all sources of joy and fulfillment, too. For most of those other things, if we do something wrong, the result isn’t the complete inability to enjoy any of the other things. If our joy in climbing comes only from pushing the envelope, the cost of doing that wrong is likely death and, yes, precluding all those other joys.

I’m not saying that tradeoff is never worth it. I am saying, however, that tradeoff isn’t always worth it. If our entire mental model of progress is to get more risky, then the law of large numbers starts to catch up pretty quickly. If we push the envelope sometimes, on the occasion, maybe that’s worth it to us. I’m not here to argue against that. But if the next climb has to always outdo the last climb in terms of danger and risk, well then…

… don’t you care about more than the next climb?