Society has an absurd general belief that life is about hanging on as long as possible. So people [are] often hanging on for the sake of hanging on and not really living… ~ Andreas Fransson
This week, the world lost two amazing extreme skiers—Canadian J.P. Auclair, and Sweden’s Andreas Fransson—to an avalanche in Chile. As I am currently in the midst of writing a series of romance novels based on extreme skiing heroes, this unfortunate news hit me a little hard.
At thirty-seven and thirty-one, respectively, these young men were taken too soon. But no one can deny they packed more thrilling adventure into those three decades than most will experience in seven or eight.
Obviously, Fransson did not wish to live a safe life. The rest of his above-quoted passage reads:
I can go on for days about this, but the important things in life are unsayable, so lets’ just live it out and see what we find behind the curtains in front of the big game we are all playing.
Perhaps their families and friends will find some consolation in the fact that they died while pursuing their passion. It’s about all any of us could hope for, I think. And while I won’t put my life at risk because I want to “hang on” and watch my children grow into adults, there is something to be said about finding meaning in life through pursuit of a passion.
I think I’ll honor them, in spirit, by naming the next hero in the series after them (J.P. Fransson??), and by carrying a little of Andreas’s philosophy into my daily life.
By the way, here’s a cool excerpt from a video of J.P. Auclair for you to enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IdS6RuTzI4
And one of the two of them skiing together:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97BiLuRYELc
What’s your view: play it safe or push the limits?
xo-jamie
