On May 16, the climbing world lost two of its beloved sons when Dean Potter and Graham Hunt died while performing a BASE jump from Yosemite’s Taft Point.

And before you could wrap your head around the story, fingers were already waving wildly.

“That’s what happens when you’re jumping off cliffs.”

“I’m thinking of Russian roulette now wonder why.”

“He wanted to die, and got his wish.”

When adventure seekers die while living on the edge, the visceral reaction from the masses is to recoil and reprimand. To insist that the end result was no surprise at all, and that these victims got what was coming to them.

And amidst these criticisms, people often develop a renewed sense of comfort in their own decisions. Because look at them – they would never take such foolish risks, and they are still alive.

Ergo, they “win.”

But are they alive as they think?

Dying is an inescapable tragedy of living. And when someone dies young, it deepens the reminder of the promise that will go unfulfilled, the adventures that will not be had, and the stories that will not be told.

It is easy to criticize these adventurers for their “foolish” choices, because their passing ignites a sense of vindication that our seemingly safer choices were indeed the right ones.

But these criticisms are often imbued with a subtle sense of envy. Not that they were jumping from cliffs, but that they did what so many of us are too afraid to do: They lived on their own terms. And they did so with a sense of wonder and enthusiasm that many of us have long forgotten was possible.

And they seem to pack more life into their short 30 to 40 years than many people live in their average of 78.

Yes, these men and others like them may have died early. Even tragically.

But is it any less tragic to survive your life, having never really lived it?

To go through the motions, numb to experiences and being so fearful of which risks to take and which to avoid that you never take any risks at all?

Is it any less devastating to live life cocooned in your comfort zone? The one that protects you from making mistakes, but the one that keeps you trapped in the shadow of shoulds and supposed to’s?

It is easy to become fastened to the hamster wheel of expectations and responsibilities – the one that is relentlessly reinforced by the world around us. But as it turns out, most of us cannot simply live the same life day in and day out and expect to feel fulfilled.

Embracing our true selves may be our greatest desire, but it is simultaneously one of the most frightening.

And the greatest question we can ask ourselves in controversies such as this is whether we are obligated to play it safe…or whether we can balance risk in pursuit of the ultimate goal to live freely and unapologetically as ourselves.

The fact is that risk is unavoidable.  

Yet too often we confuse taking risks with recklessness.

Recklessness, by definition, is the utter disregard for the consequences of one’s actions.

But wanton disregard is not the same as calculated risk.

Calculated risk involves being fully informed about your options, and the benefits and consequences of each. And taking precautions to the best of one’s ability to minimize those risks.

And then, when you have accounted for as much as you can possibly know in that moment, finally making the decision to jump.

For men like Potter and Hunt, that jump was literal. But for many of us, it can be equally terrifying to leap into a new career, a new relationship, a new job, or an entirely new way of living.

Or to make the agonizing decision to quit doing something that you love or to leave a relationship because it isn’t working the way you’d planned. Fear of failure can paralyze us as readily as the thought of BASE jumping from Half Dome.

And in those pivotal moments, you jump not because you are not afraid, but because even in the face of fear, it is the only option you have to honor the core of who you are.

Because what we regret most in life is not what we do, but the opportunities that we let slip through our fingers.   

In her book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, nurse Bronnie Ware describes her observations providing palliative care to her patients in the last weeks of their lives.

And what people regret most at the end of their lives is not that they tried skydiving, hiked the White Mountains, canoed in the Everglades, skied the backcountry, kissed that girl, or took that cross-country trip.

Rather, it’s that they spent too much time living up to the expectations of others, and not enough time living their own authentic life.

As Joseph Campbell once noted, “the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”

More than anything, what we want is to be freely and wholly ourselves.

To live life in our own way. Even when it isn’t popular, and even when it isn’t what others would do.

We want to know the freedom of embracing our own madness, and to pursue what makes us feel wholly and completely alive.

Indeed, living your own life requires courage. It means calculating risk and taking that leap, even if it scares you.

Especially if it scares you.

Living a full life does not require that you jump from planes or mountainsides.  But it DOES require accepting that risk and fear cannot be avoided.

Despite the Judas kiss of shoulds and supposed to’s, shrinking into their shadows will prove to be one of the greatest regrets of your life.

And while playing it safe may extend your life, in the end, it will be no less tragic than one that ended too soon.