One of the leading causes of death for professional skydivers, ironically, is the diver becoming too comfortable falling.
So comfortable that they forget to pull the chute—or pull too late.
Another case.
One of the leading causes of death for professional freedivers is also becoming too comfortable. But this time too comfortable in the water, too comfortable holding their breath.
Due to frequent practice of holding their breath, they become ‘immune’ to the negative feelings paired with a lack of oxygen.
They become so used to it in fact that it’s entirely possible for a diver to keep swimming, holding their breath comfortably and without any issues until suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, their brain shuts off and they lose consciousness altogether.
Both of these facts sound surreal and almost fake to the non-professional.
Yet we experience it everyday with everything we do.
I don’t fear falling when riding a bike anymore—while I used to be extremely scared to do so when I was younger.
Most people aren’t anxious 24/7 while driving. Hell, most experience drivers repeatedly doze off while driving, not even thinking about what they’re doing. Yet people who just started learning will tell you how scared they are—they couldn’t imagine NOT paying attention.
I once saw a documentary about snake venom.
And there are these people whose job it is to breed snakes and drain their venom to help with medicine and antidotes and whatnot. Extremely venomous snakes as well. It’s a dangerous job. One bite can kill you for good if you’re not paying attention.
There was this one guy working there we said, and I still remember this well, “The day I stop being scared is the day I resign”.
And it even happens in his profession where people stop being scared, only to doze off and accidentally get bitten.
My point is this.
The more used to get to something and the more experienced you become, the less you’re aware of the risks involved in what you’re doing.
This is also true for social media.
I’d been posting on Twitter religiously ever single day for the past year. I’d often see people getting banned and such, but most of them were in the earlier stages. You start to think “this will never happen to me, I’m not doing anything wrong.”
And yet, it happened to me yesterday. I unexpectedly woke up to a notification telling me my account had been suspended.
See, everyone has the same chance to just happen to get unlucky.
In fact, the longer you stay, the more likely you’ll get banned, hacked, or something equally terrible happens to your profile.
Moral of the story: It pays to be scared.
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