Looking down at a seemingly small creek from 150 meters on a platform with nothing except a cord restricting your walking abilities as it is tied around your ankles might seem like somewhat of a risk. With three other people 150 meters above sanity, telling you not to look down, and just generally chattering away making the height seem ten times higher, your heart starts to thump and climb into your rapidly drying throat. As the people tying you up look to be about 18, you then begin to wonder how safe you really are. You glance down 150 long meters to a river so shallow you can see the bottom. You bring this up to the ? supervisors? who reply that the river is really quite deep, and is just very clean and clear.
So you shuffle towards the edge of the platform where you will launch yourself into the wild blue yonder and hope and pray that you don? t hit the bottom of the river. The countdown begins at three, and at one, you let yourself fall, knowing as soon as you began there is no stopping the inevitable. You fly face-first through the air for an eternity. The bungee tied ever so carefully around your legs begins to stretch, which is almost unwelcome after the 3 second free-fall. Just when you think you are at the end of the ride, you experience an extremely cold sensation and open your eyes to find out you are wet from the waist up. You look at the river from your height at which you have recoiled to, and notice a ring forming from which you presumably entered the river.
You aren? t thinking as clearly as you might like as the adrenaline is still coursing through your veins, limiting your thought process. A small motor raft comes out to untie you from your life saving cord. Once on the boat, questions are rapidly fired at you, yet your thought process is still on the near-death experience.
You bob your head and say rather neanderthalishly: ? fun.? This is an illustration of a risk taken on a vacation in New Zealand. In a town at which we stayed and enjoyed the attractions, there was a billboard advertisement for bungee jumping in which I insisted we go. From the beginning to the end, it is all quite an experience. The lesson I learned in this adventure is: never take life for granted. That is a rather serious lesson to be learning at 17 years of age, but life is never truly understood, and always taken for granted.
Lives change in the randomness of a moment, a chance mistake, but you never think about it. You trust complete strangers every day, create new relationships, and this is what life is about. Live for the moment, and don? t take life too seriously. Worrying is like wishing time away; it gives you something to do, but never gets you anywhere. So never miss an opportunity, live life for the minute, don? t get caught up in the future because you then cannot enjoy the present. Live for the minute, each day to the fullest. Life is never truly understood, but always taken for granted.
The problem is figuring out how not to take life for granted. Live each day to the fullest and never wish away time. If you get everything out of every moment, you will not take life for granted.