The problem with being ‘risk averse’…
Early last year when I arrived in NZ I met up with Cyril Shafer. A good friend had introduced us, telling me that Cyril was a lovely person and a very interesting ‘deathy’ and that I should meet him.
I only met him once, for coffee and a chat. I had been intending to contact him again when I arrived back in NZ again but it just never happened…..and a few months ago I heard he had died suddenly.
I am pleased I got to meet him the one time I did. He really was an interesting and lovely person.
And there was one particular thing he had said to me that has stuck with me and that I had been intending to write about since we met and hadn’t yet. And hearing of his death made me reflect back on meeting him and wanting to share what we talked about. It’s stuck in my mind all these months and has been the first thing to inspire me to write again since the birth of my little girl.
As deathies do when they get together….we talked about death. We talked about what led us both to be interested in this area and we talked about the largely death denying/fearing society we live in now and the impact it has.
Then Cyril said ‘society had become so risk avoidant that it’s actually life avoidant’.
He told me about a wall climbing place in NZ somewhere where someone had fallen and died….and then the whole place had had to shut down because of it. Too dangerous. Close it down. End of story.
We talked about how in an effort to avoid any and all risk that could potentially cause harm or (gulp!) death, people were avoiding living.
Granted, there are some activities that are genuinely far more dangerous than others but ultimately you are going to die…and you are going to die doing something.
Yeah it could be climbing a wall or parachuting…. Or it could be sitting on the loo or cooking in your kitchen. Or while trying to avoid dying.
And people have died from everything. A water overdose, one paracetomol too many, touching cat poo. There is nothing that hasn’t killed someone.
People will often say “but something could happen’, which is amusing to me as that don’t actually mean ‘something’. They really mean that something bad, in particular death, could happen. And yeah, it could. But you know what else could happen? Life.
Don’t be so keen to avoid risk that you end up avoiding life.
As a traveller by nature, when I talk about wanting to travel and show my daughter the world I’ve had a couple of people caution me about how dangerous it can be OUT THERE ( which is a bit ridiculous in itself as everything they think could happen has happened locally in the area I grew up in and we currently live. To people I know.) And sure, they’re right, something bad could happen. We could die. But something bad could happen at home too. We could lock ourselves in the house to be protected from every dangerous person, germ and activity and we still won’t prevent death because ultimately it’s going to find us one day. But in our efforts to prevent death we could certainly achieve the prevention of truly living.
Embrace the reality that death will come.
Embrace the reality that good things and bad things will happen no matter where you go (or don’t go) and no matter what you do ( or don’t do).
Stop being so damn afraid….or maybe keep on being afraid, but don’t let it rule your life and your decisions.
And then get on with living.
xxx
