A rumination on intentional ruination

By Ed Goldman

I like to think of myself as being somewhat open-minded (detractors would say somewhat empty-headed). Yet, try as I might, I’ve never understood the lure of these adrenalin-igniting activities: mountain climbing, sky-diving, racecar driving, trekking (mountain hiking with the strong prospect of injuries), mountain biking (see trekking), rock climbing and something called Ultimate Frisbee. 

In my opinion, before engaging in any pastime whose name can be preceded by the adjective “ultimate,” “extreme” or “lethal,” one should review the alternatives.

I realize these all offer aesthetic pleasures. For example, you’re likely to see beautiful vistas before, below or around you while plunging down a hill, leaping out of a plane, heading into a fireball or tearing your ACL while flying through the air to catch a fluttering plastic disk even your golden retriever thought was too difficult to catch. 

But the pleasures are as rushed as the adrenalin. A mountain climber may come back from a jaunt up Kilimanjaro with a phone-ful of awesome pix, but I’ll wager you those snaps weren’t taken while the shutterbug was making the actual climb; rather,  they were taken from base camp while enjoying a cup of hot cocoa or an infusion of oxygen or as a gurney lowered him or her to safety while being applauded by the other members of the climbing team, perhaps ironically. This would be especially true for the clapping Sherpa. 

Here’s my conundrum (for younger readers, a conundrum is neither an apartment one buys nor a prophylactic one dons): Isn’t daily life dangerous and risky enough without tossing the chance of disfigurement, disability or dying into the mix?

Nearly 32,000 people died in traffic crashes in the first nine months of last year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. I have no idea why the agency didn’t report on the final three months of the year as well but speculate that while the guy was driving the report to HQ his car was T-boned in an intersection.

According to healthline.com, the leading causes of death in this country each year are heart disease, cancer, influenza, pneumonia, kidney disease, suicide, septicemia and liver diseases. You probably know or knew someone who suffered from one or more of these or, and I hope not, you did.

So with all of these looming dangers, do we have such little respect for life, or such little fear of death, that we want to up our odds of succumbing prematurely by, say, driving a race car at 190.69 miles per hour? 

That’s what Helio Castroneves of Brazil was clocked at two years ago at the Indy 500. But Helio was paid to do that. It’s his job. Yet I know people who race cars for fun, and part of the fun for them is defying gravity, velocity and sensibility. After spinning out of control on a city street doing what the media have dubbed “sideshows,” it’s Miller Time. Or weed time,  whichever floats your Spirit of Australia (the world’s fastest speedboat, according to websites devoted to this crap).

If you’ve ever been in a catastrophic accident, had a catastrophic illness or escaped a catastrophic relationship, why would you want to tempt fate by jumping out of a plane or off a mountain? Did we learn nothing from the weeks or months of recovery in a hospital, skilled-nursing center or psychotherapy?