I spent my entire Sunday languishing in camp, battling the most intense and extreme of boredom fits being all alone with nothing much to do--after finally mastering the Night Elf mid-game rush of the Huntress-Dryad combination and demolishing the computer thrice before giving up when I got demolished by the Orcs instead after I tried a Faerie Dragon rush.

Despite the cloud of suffocating boredom enveloping me, the evening wasn't too bad at all, watching Vertical Limit on (*gasps!*) free-to-air television (then again, not that I watch much of the cable channels at home)--which led me to think about the many different ways in which people live their lives, and the way I live mine.

It was quite a (literally!) cliffhanging experience filled with suspense and breath-holding, watching the mountaineers scale near-vertical rock faces, reaching out for crevices for plunging those tension-holding safety-clasps or whatever-you-call-them into. I found it quite fascinating and captivating, the way these mountaineers live to be in the danger zone, putting themselves in extreme danger, reaching out to achieve extremes, putting their lives on the line just for that adrenaline rush, just to conquer nature (I suppose, or why else do they do it?)

And in such extreme circumstances, many tens, if not hundreds of metres above the ground dangling from near-vertical rock faces, when things go wrong, there is no panicking, no chickening out, as the choices become crystal clear, cruelly clear--the father choosing to sacrifice himself by cutting his rope loose after they were left dangling when two climbers above them went crashing down into the gully below--because it was the only way to relief the load on the last remaining hook in the rock that was fast coming loose. It was a heart-wrenching sight, seeing realities played out so starkly, in such compressed time-spaces, so quickly, so suddenly.

And when you're trapped in a ravine in the Himalayas thousands of metres above sea-level, in danger of dying from the cold, from the extreme thinness of the air--with nobody but those trapped with you, what do you do?--share out the meagre resources, have everyone survive but have less time to wait out a rescue? Or do you kill the rest, and keep everything for yourself?--after all there will be nobody left to bear witness to what you do--and if in the end, you save yourself that way, will anybody blame you? Can you live with yourself for the rest of your life? Will you be noble yet foolish and try to preserve everyone, or will you be selfish and follow your animalistic survival instincts?

Tough, tough moral questions--perhaps what makes us human and separates us from the animals is our ability to tame and gain control over our in-built survival instincts in the toughest of situations, to take the moral ground and preserve the race above self.

Is my life, by contrast, too tame? After all, we only live once--so shouldn't we be out there pushing the limits, of our bodies, of our minds, doing what we never thought possible instead of living in our comfort zones?

What is all my caution for, then, in so many things--the way I believe that getting dead-drunk is an absolute no-no because you don't know what you'll be doing, the way I think so many things are foolish because they're just a waste of time and practically suicide?

Then again, throwing caution completely to the winds, is not paying life the respect it is due, and that, is nothing but foolish for sure; for even the climbers tame the risks with safety harnesses (well, ignore Tom Cruise's character, Ethan Hunt, in the opening sequence of Mission Impossible 2 haha)--so perhaps life is all about risk-taking, living on the edge--yet, it's about taking calculated risks.

So once again we reach that age-old conclusion: do everything in moderation haha. Yet, perhaps, the lesson in it for me, is to know when to let go (rather than when to take precautions haha).

Whatever.

So many mind-boggling questions, yet none of it is of any immediate concern to me while other much, much more fundamental questions to life remain unanswered and raging like wildfire, challenging me to not take notice of them, making their presence known with the not-so-seldo dysfunctionality attack. When will this end? When will I make peace with myself and find a way to live life, the way that works for me?

Soon, I hope.