Of moments I choose not to believe

There are just some days that you feel lost, from over thinking and stresses, from the everyday life musings and the bites of reality. And then, there are just some days where you feel like jumping off cliffs, not because you’re suicidal, but simply for the heck of it. I did.

The day I dived off a cliff, being unsure of where to land on and lived to tell the tale, was, and still is one of my life’s highlights.

Given the opportunity, I jumped off the edge of an approximately 30ft waterfall deep in a forest. The chances of misfortunes weighed a lot more than the possibilities of fully surviving. It could have been the death of me.

Hearing the heavy gush off a waterfall was enough to thrill or scare you. Even the guide did not dare to jump, because from where I stood, you could not really see what was waiting for you, but I knew it was deep water – and just that. The comfort thought I had was perhaps that the pain of regret from not jumping off would be more painful and would last longer than whatever I might come across when I do.

With all the freelance jobs, part-time duties, undergrad status, and struggle of surviving the day to day life, I became a sucker for thrills, no matter how temporary.

Temporary highs and cheap thrills - I guess it’s how we cope with things, we tend to escape temporarily from realities to a short existence where we have very little or limited control of. Is it wrong?
Having read through Carlo M. Cipolla’s essay, The Fundamental Laws of Human Stupidity, The third (and golden) rule states that a stupid person is someone who causes damage to another person, or a group of people while himself deriving no gain and even possible incurring losses. I don’t see why the act of cliff diving (or even travelling) is exempted from that rule.

It has been a generalization that stupid people are happy, this is because they have less worries about the consequences of their actions and most probably because what you don’t know can’t hurt you, right? With those mentioned, I have qualified as stupid and happy, still temporarily happy.

Does succumbing to temporary thrills (e.g vacations, cliff-diving, travelling) qualify us to be stupid? Absolutely not. I mean, is there such thing as permanent happiness? If there was, how would a person know if he/she is happy.

Why not give in to your euphoria every once in a while, just make sure to be sane and alive enough to live and learn from the tale. I did.