#Perspective: Young and immortal

The key to fearlessness is having no concept of your own mortality.

Children are case in point.

This weekend we were in the Central Drakensberg and decided to test our mettle on the Drakensberg Canopy Tours.

Our 4-year-old was gutted when he discovered that he was still too little to join us.

A good thing too, because despite his lion’s heart his skinny little body would likely have slipped right out of the harnesses we were strapped into (possibly not but its the sort of thing that mothers think about).

Our 6-year-old son was only just old enough.

He has been desperate to do ziplining again ever since he was treated to the experience at a cousin’s birthday party.

But when his Papa explained that these cable slides were not piddly kiddy ziplines but up to 60 metres high above the magnificent Blue Grotto forest, he started to look a little grey around the gills.

He confided in me that he was worried.

I promised we would turn back together if he decided it was too high for him.

He was not the only one looking wobbly though.

Grandpa Bruce had started to look decidedly pale as we bumped along the dirt track on the back of a bakkie towards our destination.

He insisted that he was fine but truth be told he looked a man condemned (the hairnet and round helmet completed the look beautifully).

Daniël, however, took one look at the first zipline, plunging off a cliff-face into the green yonder, and declared that he was going first.

All the rest of us could do was follow meekly, or be upstaged by a preschooler.

The child never so much as hesitated as we soared high above the gorge below, sailing onto platforms built into trees and clinging to rock faces.

The experience was absolutely thrilling.

Even more so because our two guides were so proficient.

They handled us as gently as babes, keeping us firmly clipped to either the cable or the platform at all times.

I believe them when they say they have not lost anyone yet!

They enjoyed showing off their skills too, and to Daniël’s delight sometimes zipped along upside down.

Truthfully, compared to bungee jumping, abseiling and sky diving, ziplining is on the tame side and decidedly safer.

Which is why I am glad I did those things (except the sky diving) before I had children.

There’s no chance you would catch me throwing myself bodily from a bridge now that I have little people to care for.

Once you have your own children you lose your immortality, instantly.

Perhaps I will go skydiving in my 80s, like my preschool teacher Pam Askew who at the grand age of 86 was backpacking across Africa on local taxis and jumping from planes.

Once your children and grandchildren are grown its perfectly sane to go out like a shooting star, guns blazing.

But that kind of time is not guaranteed. Life is fragile and precious.

Too often we begrudge our daily lives, imagining only our preferred future, what we will do and how we will do it.

Only when sickness or injury comes are we forced to take stock and face our immortality. But all we ever really have is right now.

And when our time is up and we, like bugs, go splat on the windscreen of life, where to then? (1 Corinthians 15vs54).

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“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift… that’s why they call it the present” – Master Oogway, Kung Fu Panda.

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