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High sensation seekers are known for
their wild hobbies and I've been on a quest to interview them about these pursuits.
The interesting thing, is they didn't
really want to talk about all the things that they did.
They wanted to talk about who they were and how that moment was just a moment.
They wanted to tell me how being a high sensation seeker wasn't what I thought it was.
Often, the people I interviewed were different than I
expected given the stunts they were famous for performing.
Take Timmy O'Neill.
Timmy has an extensive resume of thrill seeking
adventures from back country skiing to kayaking.
Timmy has made YouTube videos of himself scaling buildings in LA.
He speed climbed El Capitan,
kayak the length of the Grand Canyon seven times,
scale buildings without ropes and he's taken a few hits for it.
He survived a 120 foot fall in 2000 while climbing a granite formation in Pakistan.
Timmy is also a professional comedian as well,
in my view, as a philosopher of thrill.
Timmy told me that the reason he attempts these high risk activities,
was what he called the crux.
A crux is a puzzling or difficult situation.
It's also a crossroads and according to O'Neall,
defines the risky thrill seeking experience.
Thrill seekers put themselves in dangerous,
shocking and wondrous situations and they have to find their way out, down or through.
They fight the elements, the mountains,
distractions and sometimes even their own fear in order to make it through.
This fear can be both a lock and a key.
Fear, according to Florence Williams,
can prevent us from doing the things we love and loving the things we do but it can also,
if we're lucky, help us to access peak emotional experiences.
Many high sensation seekers are extremely lucky in this way.
I never felt as alive as when I was so close to not being alive,
one sensation seeker told me.
One adventure sports professional told me about
a situation in which he need to react quickly and instinctively.
That situation he said made him feel excited to be alive.
He was on the coast of California and there is this hike called the Lost Coast.
The mountains butt up against the coastline and the only way to experience
this part of the coastline is to hike 24 miles by foot.
You can't drive up to it because the mountains are so jagged.
The tide comes in and out throughout the day, twice a day.
As you're walking along the coast,
if you don't position yourself correctly,
the tide will come in totally surround
you and you have to get to high ground very quickly.
He tempted fate. He pushed himself a little bit too hard and was in
a situation where he had to climb up an 80-foot eroding cliff,
where you're grabbing on to roots and things like that.
He took off his backpack and threw it up a couple of feet and tried to climb up.
Meanwhile, the ground is literally falling out from under his feet.
If he would get hurt in that situation, there's no help.
Life or death moments like this one came up in many high sensation seeker stories.
Whether a street luge racing,
sky surfing or parkour,
there's a right way to perform these risky activities and deviation from that way,
can result in dire consequences.
Timmy O'Neil even adds, say example,
you're on the side of a sheer granite wall and you have to use your body in
a very precise manner to be able to overcome a difficult expanse.
If you don't execute it in just the correct way, you'll fall.
Gravity is a tough teacher but there is a reward,
it's about problem solving and it's about remaining calm,
and it's about being self-reliant and resilient and
all these great qualities that people talk all the time about, that are valuable.
The situation is heightened even more by the possibility of the unexpected.
Mountaineering alone has dozens of unexpected risks; falling rocks,
falling from rocks, falling into rocks,
wideouts, hypothermia, volcanic activity.
An experienced mountaineer must know just what to do in each of
these situations and execute it quickly without thinking about it too much.
Analysis is paralysis, is a common expression among adventure sports participants.
You're expected to react instinctively in
these high risk situations or face the consequences.
For many high sensation seekers,
the goal is to place themselves into
these crux experiences and to emerge from them more whole.
If you think about it, even low sensation seekers do this all the time,
from crossword puzzles to knitting to kiteboarding.
We seek to challenge ourselves and find reward in the challenge.
It's not a worthwhile challenge if you know you can do it.
The risk is the possibility of failure and for some high sensation seekers,
the higher the risk,
the higher the reward.
Plus they, say it's fun.
Kenneth CarterProfessor of Psychology
