Building self-belief and self-confidence was always going to be a focus during my trip, but I never thought the cup would fill so quickly. In fact, I was overconfident on several occasions in Romania, often resulting in suboptimal outcomes. It’s a rare kind of mistake for me to be making, as I usually just overanalyze and worry too much instead. Making mistakes is a good thing for my trip, because I never really had the space to make these kinds of mistakes at home. One of my favorite quotes:
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
One thing that overprotective parents fail to realize is that children need to own their mistakes in order to learn from them. Wisdom is often useless without the personal experience to back it up. Of course there are times when we should trust in knowledge from the wise, but for the smaller things we need to discover a lot of it for ourselves. If we always play by convention, we’ll never know or recognize our own limits. Good judgment does not originate from knowledge of wisdom, at least not in a modern Western culture.
But I want to talk about one particular instance of overconfidence where I made a poor decision and was lucky the consequences were not severe. When I was in Brasov, I had the direct opportunity to confront my moderate fear of heights. I’m not sure it’s accurate to say I’m afraid of heights; it’s probably closer to say that heights make me feel uneasy. Anyhow, I decided to take the challenge at Parc Aventura. It’s hard to describe the activity to someone who’s never done it, but basically it’s an obstacle course suspended in the trees. It requires balance and either stamina or strength, as you gain altitude by traversing increasingly challenging obstacles such as climbing unstable platforms and walking across ropes. The ‘reward’ for your climb is to go down zip-lines and Tarzan jumps and that kind of thing. (If this is all too vague then just look at the photo gallery on the Parc Aventura Brasov website.)
The most difficult routes are Red and Black, which are described as being for amateur athletes and semi-professional athletes respectively. I was well aware of my probable limits despite seeing this particular course for the first time, because I had done a similar course in high school (from which I had shied away from the giant Tarzan jump) and had been thinking about training a little before reattempting it. The limiting factor would be my lack of upper body strength, and it meant I most likely could not complete the Black route.
The waiting time and preparation when entering the park was actually somewhat frustrating, but anyway I asked the safety instructor how long a Red route would take. He said he didn’t know and that it depended on how fast you went, so I asked whether it could possibly take an hour. He scoffed and said 20 minutes max. For safety reasons, you have to do an easier course before attempting one of the two Red courses. The thing is, I didn’t even find these “kid’s courses” that easy, and one of the rope climbing exercises took all my energy. I also got stuck in the middle of a Tarzan jump because I had incorrectly prepped one end of the rope, but luckily that was at an easier difficulty and a guy with a ladder came to reset my rope.
So there I was, one hour in, pretty darn tired and having only done the hardest “easy” course. What’s more, the Red course looked a lot harder (and higher) than the Blue course. Like, the first few obstacles in sight were already super intimidating. I’ll admit it—what compelled me to start that Red course was that a younger girl had just began it. If she can make it so can I, I thought. I would also be able to see how she approached the obstacles. We both went slowly. Two really good things about this Park’s setup is that the layout is compact, meaning you don’t feel too isolated even if no one else is doing your course. Also, each route has multiple ‘checkpoints’ that offer an exit option. So if you want to quit, you just need to make it to the checkpoint for that segment of the route and then you can zip-line down to the ground.
The girl in front made it to the first checkpoint and then she disappeared soon after; she took the exit. When I made there too, I had a difficult choice to make. I took a really long time to decide whether to continue or bail out. I couldn’t clearly see what the next few obstacles were, but it was clearly going to get even harder. One mother caught me scoping out the escape option, and she said “You have to go that way.” That angered me as I was choosing between safety and danger, not confused about how to choose the latter. It settled my inevitable decision much faster. The thing is, I knew I could probably complete the next section. I just didn’t know how much it would cost my body. I went through it, very slowly and steadily. At times calming myself and offering words of support. I had no one to rely on except myself. When you’re higher than 10m up and any misstep could cost you, the concept of height kind of becomes irrelevant. Falling simply wasn’t an option, and all the attention and focus made me instinctively unconcerned about the discomfort of being suspended high up. Trust in physics. Trust in the design of the course that this skateboard won’t topple over. Trust in my ability to adjust to imbalance. Stepping over and under some suspended rungs, I finally reached the second checkpoint.
My hands were seriously tensed up and it was painful to relax. I knew that what was ahead was almost certainly the last section of this Red route. I knew that I could make it, but that it would take everything I had left. I would have to rely on adrenaline to get me through. I knew that there was a risk of cramp if I tried to hold an uncomfortable stance, and if another obstacle required upper body strength I would have a very limited window of stamina to complete it.
I went ahead with it. The thing about this course is that you can front-load all your bravery and then you basically have no choice but to follow through. The final obstacle before gliding down was stepping your feet through and balancing on dangling rings. The primary reason it was awkward as hell was because the way you mounted your two safety harnesses to the hand rope dictated that you had to make your next step from the left no matter which foot you were already balancing on. I nearly lost it at the penultimate step; just didn’t have enough stamina left to balance myself. I traded rope burn for my life throughout that obstacle. Your safety harness will prevent you from falling to death, but it might not prevent you from serious injury from losing your grip and not having the strength to recover and re-position. There’s also not much the staff can do to help you even if they can reach you at the higher stages. Basically, you still need to have the strength to pull yourself through. I made it and just barely, assisted by the edge from recognizing it as a life-threatening situation and knowing I had to make it within a few more seconds.
Screw that parent who looked on as if the course was straightforward while her own daughter had quit. Screw that instructor who said it couldn’t take an hour. I took more than an hour, and I was still the only person to finish a Red route that whole day. I’m sure 20 minutes would have been possible for a pro athlete, but only if you’re strong enough and have enough stamina that you’re comfortable spending the majority of your time off balance. Clearly I was not.
The truth is, I felt no sense of accomplishment after completing the Red course. I faced my fears and yet I had proven nothing except that I was stupid enough to put my body at risk for the sake of vanity. I would be injured for days regardless. I had calculated all the relevant factors and made the wrong decision. I achieved nothing because I already knew my limits—to recklessly demand proof of it only indicated doubt in my knowledge and doubt in the principle that sometimes knowledge is enough. I got sucked into judging myself by the measurable but meaningless achievements set by others. Seriously, there is no real shame in only being able to do the “kid’s easy course.”
I should have dug deep and believed in myself and remembered:
You have nothing to prove, only to share.
Then again, it takes bad judgment to form good judgment, right?
INTP things 