I am a believer that different people come into our lives at different stages of finding out who we are, and they teach us something. Each person unintentionally revives a part of us we forgot we had. We end up actually surprising ourselves with our newfound capabilities. These skills or characteristics might surface from a relationship leaving you more confident than you had before; from a friendship suddenly distant, yet consistent; from a sisterhood generating compassion; maybe even a policeman instilling calmness. Whoever the messenger, our personalities and identities continue to grow and get better with every new person we meet.

Today, I surprised myself when the daring and fearless, but possibly crazy piece of my being spoke up: “Next time, let’s try cliff jumping.” I’ve always wanted to be brave enough to ski off of a cliff, but I’ve never actually done anything about it. Until today, that is. I had almost forgotten about that risk-taking daredevil part of me, but somebody brought it out.

Skiing is the greatest sport in the history of the world, as everyone who skis knows, so naturally this is how it all started. And who likes to ski alone? Nobody. Hence the ‘somebody’ mentioned above. The first time he fell -- not really on his face, I’ll give him that -- I thought, Hey, it happens to the best of us. The second time, though, I thought, I’m going to end up possibly killing him if I ski any faster. By the third time, I wondered if his skis were genuinely just broken. But by the fourth time, I saw it in a different way: he wasn’t bad at skiing, he was the braver skier, and he wasn’t afraid to fall on his face. I saw this and was inspired by it.

Taking risks might be scary, but what fun would life be if you never took a risk? I’ll tell you. It’d be about as fun as reading textbooks for the rest of your life. And nobody does that for fun. Trying new things and being unafraid to make mistakes means that you will not only get better at skiing, but you will not be so boring, you will learn new life skills that will one day come in handy, and you will be able to know yourself better, but experiencing firsthand what you like and what you don’t.

I may have been secretly making fun of him in my head, but I wasn’t taking the same risks. That part of me was there, hiding somewhere, but it didn’t come out until this face-planting ski partner reminded me of it.

If ever someone has nuked a lesson out of a ski day, it would be me. Still, I learned that even if you have to embarrass yourself for just a few minutes out of the day, while you are laying, sprawled out on the snow as skiers and boarders pass by, it is all worth it in the end. You aren’t living life if you are watching the fun pass you by. You are only correctly living if you are taking a chance, making a mistake, choosing the risk over the standard. In this case, the closer you get to non-living, is when you know just how alive you are. And if that isn’t convincing enough, just do it because it’s fun!