What is life without a little risk?
“Signing this document absolves this sky diving company from all responsibility in the case of any injury, including death.”
I re-read that a couple of times, took a deep breath and signed on the dotted line.
I’m most certainly one that lives on the edge. I don’t look before I leap (no pun intended) and I don’t consider the consequences. I blindly follow what my heart and mind (or sometimes either exclusively) tells me to do.
Wouldn’t life be boring otherwise? My mother, Asmi, bless her cotton socks, is a worrier. My father and I both joke that if mum didn’t have anything to worry about, then she’d worry about having nothing to worry about. Not only does she labour over every hypothetical outcome of the situation at hand, she will then analyse the hypothetical outcomes of the hypothetical outcomes of the situation at hand.
If mum’s worrying was translated into a maths equation, it would be along the lines of:
If x results in a or b or c and a results in d and e, b results in f and g and c results in h and i, where a is an almost certainty and b and c are highly unlikely to happen, should I do a, b, or c, and then should I do d, e, f, g, h or i?
Basically it’s a lot of variables that just don’t need to be there.
But I love my mum, I love her analytical mind, I love how she considers all possible outcomes and calculates risk.
When she went skydiving (because my mum is cool like that), I’m sure she checked her safety equipment 5 times before she jumped, was constantly aware of her altitude and released her parachute at exactly 1000m, or maybe 999m if she was having a bad day.
Me? I just jump. I am 0% foresight and 100% hindsight. I didn’t check my equipment. On the flight up, when asked what to do at 1000m, I said the only thing that popped into my mind. “Pray”. During the tandem skydive, when the instructor showed me his watch to indicate that the altitude was now 1000m and I needed to deploy the parachute, I just thought, “really? I’m falling from the sky and you’re telling me the time.” After he deployed the parachute (at 900m, after realising that I had forgotten to open that little thing that would save both of our lives), I realised why he was showing me his watch. Whoops.
This look-after-I-leap attitude has not served me well in some instances. Unknowingly taking the riskiest option has had some dire, painful outcomes. Then again, sometimes I’ve been lucky and they have paid off.
One of my uncles visited London and stayed with us.
“I always believed in balance. After meeting Mariya I realise that she is the yang to Asmi’s ying.”
I think he said that in jest, but in this context, he is 100% correct. Oftentimes I will hear my mum say “Don’t do that, if you do it then this will happen. Do this instead, it will be much better for you.” Every time, she was right. Conversely, there have been many times where I have said “Mum, you need to stop worrying about b, c, d, e, f….z, because a will happen. So stop caring about the rest!” I don’t have 100% success rate, but I’m still in training.
What is life without a little risk?
I think I need to work on mastering that part about “a little”.
And listen to my mother more.
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