The Illusion of Immortality.

Like Icarus flying too close to the sun, don’t we all suffer from it at one time or another?

I remember the day my husband realized he was not immortal - and it took him longer than you might imagine. I mean, we already had three kids and a big mortgage. He was out biking with a friend, traveling down a steep grade at a high rate of speed when he hit a sharp curve. Down he went. Fortunately, the bike stayed between his legs and protected him from nothing worse than losing skin from a third of his body. He was damn lucky. But that was also the day he grasped the fact that he is not invulnerable. I could nag all I wanted to, he had to discover the illusion of immortality for himself.

There’s an article in the most recent issue of ESPN The Magazine about this very thing - except the author missed the point of her own article. It’s about Steph Gilmore, an Australian surfer, perhaps the best female surfer in the world, who was attacked by a man wielding a metal bar in the garage of her own apartment building. She was nearly killed. Her physical injuries have healed, but it’s healing the mental and emotional aftermath of the attack that’s tough.

The article addresses PTSD. Yes, it is one of the themes behind Ms. Gilmore’s difficult recovery. But the larger theme is the illusion of immortality. Elite athletes take huge risks. The only way you can take those huge risks is to believe in the illusion of immortality. If you’re worried about dying all the time, you’d never fly off a ski jump or surf down a wave fifty feet high or climb a sheer rock wall.

Steph Gilmore seems to realize this, as she says in the last paragraph: “I’m human? I don’t want to be human,” she says. “I want to be a superhero.”

Should I somehow connect this story to writing? Maybe. We often create characters who are superheroes. Sometimes, like Icarus, they fly too close to the sun and burn their wings.

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