How to do Ribs
I like adventure. And some risk. But I have my limits. I have no plans to try, say, sky diving, or scuba diving. Not my bag.
Since I was a child, my mom has always been a worrywart and on the nervous side about me “doing stuff.” I respect my mom so much and have wanted to emulate her in many ways, but this was not one. I don’t like being scared to “do things” if there’s part of me that wants to do them.
A few years ago I was babysitting for a young couple and was putting the sleeping 19-pound baby into his crib. The side rail was up and I couldn’t figure out the latch and I didn’t want to wake him, so I tried to lower him over the full-height side rail.
The lil-big tyke was too heavy and I realized gravity was working against me and in my desperate attempt to 1) keep from waking him and 2) not drop him into the crib, I, in a combination of falling and willing sacrifice—slammed my side into the rail. I muffled a semi-silent scream. The lil-big tyke had a momentary frightened look when he saw my contorted face, but then relaxed into his foggy slumber, as his sweet back gently met with the mattress. I lay on the floor, holding my side, as I listened to the soft breathing of the sleeping lil-big tyke, forever known to me as The Rib-Crusher.
I broke my ribs.
When I told my mom how I’d broken my ribs putting a baby into a crib, over the phone, she said, “PAM! Why don’t you just stay home?!”
I didn’t answer her. I mean, what do you say to that?
I don’t profess to be a pro anything other than a “professional unpaid people-watcher.” I’m not an expert at sports or athletics. But for the most part, I always have and can hold my own. In grade school, I was a master at dodge ball, and as an adult, I did do pretty well getting to the top of Half Dome, if I do so say myself. I even hung my boots over the edge, and gazed down 4,800 feet into the Yosemite Valley.
A close friend of mine called me an “edge-dweller,” recently. She reminded me of something I’d mentioned to her once, that I’d forgotten. She recalled me saying, “I don’t like to be afraid, and that being scared of something is not a good enough reason not to do it. And that’s when I know I probably should.”
Disclaimer: Across the board, I don’t know if that’s always good advice.
But sometimes it is.
I do believe what Neale Donald Walsch said, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone,” and I think Eleanor Roosevelt’s “Do one thing every day that scares you” is gold, too.
My husband John made a reel of me edge-dwelling, or what I prefer to call, “adventuring” or just having fun going fast. If you’d like, pump up the volume or turn it down, there is some screaming involved.
The scariest things I’ve ever done have had nothing to do with physical risk or adventure. They have been risks of the heart. These are the most dangerous ones, I believe.
Off the top of my head, I can think of several things in life I have been terrified to do, did not want to do, but I did them anyway. Those are the riskiest moments where I grew the most and of which I am still proud, and do not regret.
Being “fearless” is bandied about in our culture as something we ought to be, or sometimes we call someone “fearless.” James Neil Hollingworth said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”
You can stay home and “be safe,” but then again, you can be sitting at your breakfast table eating Corn Flakes and your refrigerator can blow up two feet from you. True story.
You can leave your house and go babysit for a friend and you can break your ribs.
As long as I can remember, one of my favorite life quotes has been by Helen Keller, and I think we’re all familiar with Helen Keller’s “limitations.” The line goes, “Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
Coincidently, I just found the full quote for the first time this very moment, and it it perfectly captures what I’m trying to say in this post, on this side of heaven anyway:
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole, experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
– Helen Keller