As a parent whose kids participate in sports, I was struck by the recent story of a young and accomplished football player who abruptly ended his career for fear of hurting his brain. Chris Borland, a linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers, said the research he had done into the game’s possible neurological consequences made his decision simple.
Borland’s father, interviewed by Fox Sports, said he was proud of his son’s maturity.
“I think maybe it’s one of those affirming things as a parent, you know, that maybe somewhere along the line you accidentally did something right,” he said.
A few days later, I read a story about another young athlete who reached the opposite conclusion about his own dangerous sport.
Alex Honnold is the world’s best free-soloist, a person who climbs sheer rock faces without a rope, putting himself at risk of death every time he goes onto a mountain. The activity is so potentially lethal that one of Honnold’s corporate sponsors withdrew its support, saying it no longer wanted to be associated with such extreme risk-taking.
Yet on he climbs, aiming toward a ropeless ascent of California’s forbidding El Capitan. His mother, asked by the New York Times about how she could put up with her son’s life of peril, said she learned to stop worrying.
“Alex is the only one on the planet who knows what Alex can do, and I’ve had to learn to just trust that,” she said.
These obviously are very different situations, but for me, they are both evidence of parents and children who have learned a vital and underrated life skill — evaluating risk.
We are in an age of helicopter parents and padded playgrounds, where many of us try to protect our kids by sanding down life’s sharp corners. We can’t get them all, though, so sooner or later we have to figure out just how much danger we’re willing to tolerate.
Most people are terrible with this. They exaggerate minor threats and ignore major ones — not allowing a child to venture outside in a safe neighborhood, say, while letting him down a pantry’s worth of snack cakes and energy drinks.
It leads to a weird combination of dread and obliviousness that screws up both a parent’s and a child’s ability to gauge risk. And if Jimmy and Madison don’t start developing that skill when they’re young, they’ll probably learn it the hard way once they’re grown.
Getting through this starts with critical thinking, and that’s why I’m so impressed with Borland. He knew the hazards of football in a way few of us can, and he withstood them long enough to make it to the NFL. But then he did a sober, painstaking examination of what he was doing and decided the prudent thing was to quit.
“I love the visceral feeling of the violence of the game; I think everyone that plays at a high level is passionate about that,” he said in an interview with CBS. “However, I don’t think you shouldn’t be informed and you should have every opportunity to know all you can about the dangers of that feeling that you love and the sport that you’re passionate about.”
He allowed, though, that others could reach a different conclusion, and that leads to the second part of the risk equation: self-awareness.
Everyone needs to understand how much of a gamble they’re willing to make, and that’s why I’m equally impressed by Honnold, the rope-shunning rock climber. He clearly grasps that what he does could end in death, but he believes if he played it safe, his life would be diminished.
He summed it up in an essay soon after his sponsor dropped him:
“Soloing appeals to me for a variety of reasons: the feeling of mastery that comes from taking on a big challenge, the sheer simplicity of the movement, the experience of being in such an exposed position,” he wrote. “Those reasons are a powerful enough motivation for me to take certain risks. But it’s a personal decision, and one that I consider carefully before any serious ascent.”
It’s easy to pass judgment on another person’s choices, but when they are the result of careful thought, you’ve got to respect them.
So Borland and Honnold deserve our admiration, as do their parents. It’s a rare thing to encounter such courage and wisdom in two people, even if they’re headed in opposite directions.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
