When Our Passion in Life Risks Our Life

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Passion is what pushes us to succeed in everything we do, but what happens when the thing we love to do is also putting our lives at risk? Anyone can become injured while participating in his or her passion. It only takes the simple act of wrong footing or the slip of a hand while doing what we love to cause numerous doctor visits and surgeries. There seem to be some people though that “simply cannot resist the danger,” these are the people who risk their lives, not just their health, countless times all for their passion. (James 138) Bethany Hamilton took the risk of a shark attack everyday when she drug her board out into the ocean water, and Joe Slowinski took the risk when he bare handedly caught highly venomous snakes every day. Almost everything thing we do has risks, but at what point does our passion for something become dangerous and harmful instead of bringing joy to us?
It is okay to have a healthy obsession, but when your life revolves around your passion it can become dangerous when you get caught up in the act of “obsessive routine” and take these deadly risks on a daily basis. (Evans 2010) In “Teen Surf Addict,” Bethany Hamilton used her obsession to motivate her and help push her through hard times. It “fed her resolve to get back in the water.” (Teen Surf Addict 2) Even though she was putting herself in hazardous situations daily, she used her passion to fuel her, instead of allowing her passion to consume her life. Bethany herself said, “Surfing is an addiction, a pleasure rush.” Bethany Hamilton is unlike Ron Huff from Fatal Attractions, whose “love for animals completed his life.” (Evans 2010) Ron’s love for lizards became an obsession but not one that helped him prosper. Ron was adrift in the world of his re...

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...e dangers that can be caused by our actions, become careless and apathetic while working, and disassociate ourselves from normal activities due to our obsessive characteristics towards our passion. Having substantial determination towards our passion is imperative, but without taking time to evaluate what you are performing and how to do it safely, our passions might not provide the delectation that we look towards them for. Even though Joe Slowinski accepted the fact that “the way he lived and worked might someday be the death of him,” he still worked vigorously towards his goals aimed towards his passion. He was a loss to the worlds herpetology program but a very conspicuous loss, because deaths like Joe Slowinski’s death keep the rest of the world in bewilderment about our passion and the risks we should take until we realize one day that we have taken too many.

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