Zack's Post

I'm not trying to be a devil's advocate or rain on anybody's parade but a lot of what people already talked about, standing up for people, public speaking, admitting mistakes, getting out of bed everyday, I just do it because it has to be done, I more afraid of the consequences there are if I don't or because I'm hungry when I get up in the morning and if I don't walk as far as the kitchen I will never eat anything. More often in my life courage is less about standing up to a fear as much as just being too stupid to know it's there. I love climbing and I love to cheat death when I climb, but as often as not when I come to a place that's at the edge of my ability and there's a pretty good chance of getting hurt I back down. The gutsy moves come when there is no risk, when I'm invincible. I will either be overconfident in my ability or just choose to ignore the risk. Prime example, a few minutes ago I repelled out of my bedroom window on a complete whim. I was fine, but I was stupid. I didn't tell anybody what I was doing and even when I was taking safety precautions, I really had no idea if my bedpost could take the shock of a fall or if a figure-eight not was really the best to make an anchor with. I didn't have a secondary safety line so if my grip slipped I'd fall all the way, and to top it all off I hadn't repelled with a figure eight device before. The reason I did it was because I was convinced in my own ability and that I probably wouldn't suffer more than a sprained ankle in a fall (wrong! I definitely would have broken something looking at it from below). So I guess if doing something this stupid was courageous to do it was because I had to not even let fear enter the picture. Subconsciously I knew what I was doing, but I was just so gung-ho that it never occurred to me to be scared. And now that I've done it once, I think I'll go try again.