The opinions, beliefs, and arguments of this opinion piece do not align with the viewpoints or priorities of The Wesleyan Argus as a student-led institution.

Content warning: This article contains references to death. 

When I was younger I realized there were a lot of very bad things that could happen to people. I’d hear stories watching the news, listening to the radio, or from my mom (who was a doctor) of people going missing, getting killed, and generally not having a great time. 

So I started writing a list in my head. All the things, places, objects, airlines, foods, games, people, and clothes, to avoid, to not fly, to not eat, to not play, to stay away from, to not wear, and much, much more. This list got longer and longer as time went on. It would bounce around in my helmeted head while I skied, or when I went to a restaurant and saw some bacon wrapped or cheese covered something on the menu that I wanted, but might just be the meal to clog my arteries. I vowed to myself: Don’t go hiking alone, and definitely don’t ride a motorcycle. My list was a constant protector, a little voice in my head telling me how to live. I treated it like an equation for immortality. Subtract enough risks, add enough preventative measures, and boom: I’ll never die. Even if I do, my life on Earth will be painless as long as I follow my magic formula.

But as this equation grew, it started to look like pi: never ending and completely unmemorizable, no matter how much time and anxiety I put into it. I could never be sure if the cliffs too unstable for hiking were in the Marin Headlands or if that rule was about Land’s End. With my cholesterol, maybe I should do both because my risk of dying is higher from a heart attack anyway and I could really use the exercise. And obviously I have to consider that beautiful views decrease stress, and stress leads to death. But what if I run into a rattlesnake? Or a tree? What to do, what to do? There were just too many variables. No matter how many mistakes I added to my list, I could never account for all of the potential blunders, all of the possible configurations on the chessboard of death. Even if I could have a list of every possible mistake, I would never be able to account for the risks brought on by living a supposedly mistake-free life. My equation wasn’t addition and subtraction, it had to account for exponential growth too.

Then flying back to school after this winter break, I started to worry about traveling on any airline, not just the ones I knew had crashed. Inputting my airline, United, into my function should give me a positive result. But for some reason the voice in my head told me that this was a bad, terrible, fatal mistake. My flight to New York that I’ve taken hundreds of times before might be the one to explode in a ball of fiery doom, or land wrong, or get lost and fly over North Korea and get shot down, or end up in the hands of an evil pilot who sends us straight down into a cornfield in Nebraska just because he feels like it. This could be the big crash some other kid hears about that gets him to add United to his list of nevers. My equation wasn’t working and I was too afraid to do anything. Suddenly that little voice that had protected me for so long was sounding the alarm about everything I did. 

Then the other day I went skiing with some friends. While I brought my own helmet, one of my friends didn’t. He tried to rent one but the shop was out. Someone was going to have to break one of my rules. My friend had only skied a few times, so after a quick calculation of the risks I thought it would be safest if I gave him my helmet. And for most of the day, I skied worry free. When I wanted to try something in the half-pipe I’d get it back, but for the most part I was going equation-less. And it felt good, really good. For the first time in a while, I could feel the wind and the cold, without some nagging voice telling me that this is how I die. Now, I’m not saying we should always take risks and live on the edge. Looking out for ourselves is important, even if it’s only to look after the people who care about us. But you can’t worry about everything, and you’ll be a lot happier if you don’t. Sometimes you just have to ski free. 

Isaiah Koenig can be reached at ikoenig@wesleyan.edu.