I don't think people would climb mountains or jump off bridges with parachutes or kayak Class V rapids if those things didn't offer the brief and horrible illusion of imminent death. They would just be complicated, time-consuming endeavors that we'd steer well clear of because they got in the way of real life.
Interpretation
The thrill of danger motivates adventurous activities, highlighting our desire for risk to feel alive.
In this quote, Sebastian Junger reflects on the nature of human adventure and risk-taking, suggesting that the allure of extreme sports and dangerous activities comes from the fleeting sensation of confronting mortality. Without the potential for danger, these activities might be perceived as tedious and ordinary, stripping them of their excitement and appeal. Junger's insight reveals a deeper truth about the human experience: that the sensation of imminent death invigorates our desire to live fully and embrace the extraordinary.
In practice
In a motivational speech to inspire young adults to take risks.
The Army might screw you and your girlfriend might dump you and the enemy might kill you, but the shared commitment to safeguard one another’s lives is unnegotiable and only deepens with time. The willingness to die for another person is a form of love that even religions fail to inspire, and the experience of it changes a person profoundly.
The cause doesn't have to be righteous and battle doesn't have to be winnable; but over and over again throughout history, men have chosen to die in battle with their friends rather than to flee on their own and survive.
When you're scared, you're still hanging on to life. When you're ready to die, you let it go. A sort of emptying out occurs, a giving up on the world that seems oddly familiar even if you've never done it before.
Maybe the ultimate wound is the one that makes you miss the war you got it in.
It's fun to have money, but the more money I get, the less interesting it becomes. If you don't have very much, you have to think about it. If you are starving, you become interested in food. If you are struggling to pay the bills, money becomes tragically important.
In some ways, risk-taking is the ultimate act of self-indulgence , an obscene insult to the preciousness of life. And yet, how can one dismiss something that persists despite every reasonable theory that it shouldn't?
Demonstrate to the world there is "No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy" than a U.S. Marine.
Covering the civil-rights movement was a mind- and eye-opener for me. Houston was a segregated society, as was Texas as a whole - some of it by law, a lot of it by fear and tradition. But there was no violence where I lived, and if there was hate, it was either concealed from me or I just didn't recognize it.
To the predators... Weinstein, the stranger, the relative, the boyfriend... I say to you, 'You can choose your sin but you don't get to choose the consequences.' To the victims... I see you. I believe you... and I'm listening.
Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love.
I always showed myself in the face of day, asserting the liberty and independence of my country, while some others, like owls, courted concealment and were too much afraid of losing their roosts to leave them for such a cause.
It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same.
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