Being wrapped in cotton wool obscures your vision.

Today I am off to a Working at Heights course. The guys tell me that the point of excitement for the day will be that I get to jump off the back of a truck. Safely, with a harness.

I am scared. Not of jumping off the truck - that in fact will be pretty fun. I'm scared that all this safety training is going to embed itself in my already overcautious brain and stop me from seeing and doing things that involve risk. That the rewards of risk-taking behaviors will be taken away from me. That I will become a person who remains on the path at all times, hands on the hand rails so that I can maintain my three points of contact.

I don't want to see what everybody else sees. I don't want to be the same person as the hundreds of tourists before me, with the same picture and same perspective. I don't want to be under the monument, looking up at it. I want to be on it. When I walk around a statue, I'm not really looking at it from different angles in wonder. I'm surveying it for possible hand-holds.

Please, please, please do not let all this training take away my sense of adventure. Please do not let it take away my trust in my own ability to climb, to look down, to jump, to see.