Really tragic to hear about the guy who died at the waterfalls. Risky photographs are something you see millions of tourists do year-round. People go to the edge of canyons, swift rivers, and waterfalls for that one exhilarating dare-devil shot. I don't think anyone anticipates death. When you crunch the numbers the chances are so minuscule. But when it does, it always seems exponential.
I also think a sense of mortality comes late in life. When I was young, I too did the dumbest shit like this. I have run to cross the street with two buses barreling down the road. I used to walk on the narrow wall of our building terrace with a false foot meaning death or surely broken bones after falling down four flights.
Then one day I fell at work. I had tripped over a bag of soil because I was carrying a tray of plants and couldn't see where I was going. I fell hard and shattered my wrist and forearm. It required surgery with nine pins and a plate. You could see my forearm clearly warped till the surgery. I never broke a bone as a kid. For the first time in my life, I experienced excruciating pain. I had to take painkillers till I was loopy for the pain to be bearable. Ever since that day, I have become paranoid about falling. Or rather paranoid about pain. Even if the chance of getting injured is 0.000001%, I am so cautious because I get flashbacks of the pain I had when my bones broke.
So now I am a scaredy cat who avoids risk of all kinds.
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