Just a Matter of Time

Last evening in Costa Rica, a 24 year old extreme motorbike jumper (ala X-Games) named Jeremy Lusk was killed in a crash. I have to be the first to admit that I have watched these types of events in awe of the stunts they pull off. However, I have also been repeating to my family that somebody will be killed doing this (or the freestyle snowboarding, or freestyle skateboarding, or freestyle bmx biking). The stunts they pull off have been getting increasingly bigger and bigger. You knew it was just a matter of time before the limit was reached. Now, I also have to admit that I love racing. And the number of race car drivers killed over the years far exceeds the number of X-Gamers. So where is the justification? What is the point I'm trying to make? Everything we do has risk. I tell my kids that every time they climb behind the wheel of a car to drive to school or a friends house, there is a risk that they will not make it home alive. It's a risk we are willing to take. But there is a difference. The difference is that in driving, or even racing, the point is not to keep pressing the envelope or raising the bar like it is in the extreme sports. Take NASCAR. They actually keep slowing the cars down. The point is not to keep setting speed records, it's to be the best driver with then best equipment where the speed playing field is mostly relegated. When my kids drive, they are (supposed to be) bound by speed limits and driving restrictions - all in the name of safety. But these extreme sports know no bounds. The whole point is to keep pushing to the next height, the next rotation, the next flip. The point is to keep doing more. That's the difference. No safety precautions have been taken in these. It's all young, exuberant talent that gets excited when the brush with disaster has been survived. A couple of years ago, the young skateboarder Jake Brown came within a gnats eyelash of meeting the same fate as Jeremy Lusk in the 2007 X-Games freestyle jumps. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLJe9ISn7XE) Yet, the next year, they were pushing the limits again, and they will surely push further this coming summer. I have told my family that I refuse to watch any more X-Games or extreme sports. I am not going to continue to patronize our country's obsession with pushing the limits just for the thrill. I do not believe that this feeding frenzy of excitement that our young people embrace today is healthy. We are no longer shocked by the site of somebody meeting their maker. YouTube, Most Shocking, Hollywood and the video game industry have taken the "shock" factor away. This is not good, and I believe we will reap more and more "benefits" from it. I believe it goes deeper than even that. I believe that the respect for life is gone. So what if somebody dies? That seems to be more and more the attitude of this land - at a younger and younger age. What do our kids have to look forward to if they have lost their innocence by age 7 or 8? No wonder they turn to more extreme, more daring, more drugs, more of everything . . . .