I think of Austrailia when I hear the phrase “Down Under”. The land down under is an adventurous place, with a well loved accent to spread cheer. I have a different down under to discuss here.

Not going to claim everyone loves a roller coaster. My first roller coaster was called The Big Dipper. We were finally 8 years old and tall enough to ride. We had been waiting a whole year to get to this summer so that we could ride it like our older brothers did, and all alone. We did not want to be on the same ride with them either. Hugely excited we got into the seats, pulled the bar down, and noticed that there was a lot of room between us and the bar. That was where our concerns began.

The wonderful slow chain ride up the large hill was a blast. We had been looking up at it since we first set eyes on the biggest attraction in the park. Now we had a view from the top of the entire park. Awesome! And boy did it go fast on the way down! Plastering us to the back of our seats, The Big Dipper roared along the track, drowning out most of the screams of all the girls around us. We went up the next hill, but at the top, something was different. We were no longer feeling the back of our seats, or the bottom of our seats. We floated, too high it felt. On the way down I was able to squeeze under the bar and get to the bottom of the car, tucking safely down under the seat in front of me. I rode the rest of the ride there. When we finally stopped going up and down, I looked over to climb back up and my buddy was right down there too. But we felt that we had snuck back up into our seats before the ride attendants laid eyes on our coaster. What a blast, and once was enough for that year.

Ever get into something that turned out to be a little over your head? Not talking about plumbing or a large project that can be handed off or contracted out. Something like rock climbing or zip lining, maybe surfing too big of wave. On the one hand, this is the high that thrill seekers are after. They call it living on the edge, while the rest of us might think it is barely escaping disaster. Our youth can have us thinking that we are indestructible, while life’s experiences often show us how fragile we really are. On the other hand, there is never doing anything risky. Keep my two feet securely on the ground, not moving too fast, not going too high, not going too far, not getting in too deep. It is really about what makes you tick and what a life worth living is like. I actually suggest that both of these extremes find some things in the middle that provide those same feelings, just a few notches down. There is enough in life to enjoy, everyday, almost every minute.

I hope that you can have a Happy thrill-ride of a Friday. Remember to subscribe on the Perspectives page.

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