“SCARY” is really SAFE.
I’ve been targeted as a high-risk adrenaline junky. Mom hates looking at my Instagram. When asking friends to join my weekend adventures, I’m often met with apprehension. I test limits. Frequently. And I’ll argue it’s safer than days spent in the regular life cycle.
Yes. That is me. I’m using a rock to propel myself, and my bike, over a fence on the Middle Gate Trail outside of Tucson, AZ. Why over the fence when the standard protocol is to simply slide the baling wire off the post, pass through, and reattach? Because. It’s safer.
The audience replies, “Huh?”
Whether I’m sailing over a fence, screaming down a steep rock face, or soaring over a gap, if I am pushing my limit on the bike, my mind is clear. Crystal clear. So damn clear that I know what happens before it happens, I understand sensations before they’re realizations, I am living in the future, understanding the now, and building on the just happened. And all of this is done at hyper-speed. Flow.
Shortly before the photo above was taken. I didn’t have flow. In the pic, flow. Before? I found myself balled up in the dirt with cactus sticking out of my shoe, blood oozing from my forearm and throbbing pain in my knee. Why? What craziness had I just plowed through? Nothing. Following my buddy on a zero-consequence piece of trail, en route to the good stuff, I smashed a pedal into an unseen, small rock and careened head first over my handlebars. Face first in the dirt I sat dumbfounded. I had no idea how that just happened, and yet it did. Following Victor, I had been daydreaming about the rest of the ride, I was watching him ride, I thought about the cacti surrounding the trail and the majestic nature of the desert. Wandering thoughts. Idle focus is the fool’s playground.
High-consequence activity eliminates idle focus. High-consequence activity demands a tuned mind, body, and spirit. High-consequence activity, while perhaps deadly, decreases chance of calamity. There are meditation guides, salt-water filled tanks, dark rooms, Himalayan caves, and collections of crystals all fed to you on your IG feed offering a clearer vision of the world. My suggestion? Go do some scary shit. Go get so totally wound up on a white-knuckle experience that the only way through is with a full-being focus, and then marvel. Be astounded at your capability to forget every earthly thought, stress, and annoyance. Finding flow isn’t just for those crazy guys, it’s available to all of us, and being butt-puckered nervous is a great way to experience it.
Scary shit is safer than daily shit.
Go get puckered.
