They say that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who do stunts that will take them as close as possible to death and those who like watching them.
The first group include those who get the greatest pleasure from hanging onto their life by a thread with examples like spending over a month suspended over a river with no food, enduring over 60 hours encased in an ice block, spending a week in a coffin with no food and water, suffering the stings of being within an enclosure of poisonous scorpions and so on.
If you think of it, there are many people who take part in very dangerous activities simply for the thrill of it, such as bungee jumpers, skydivers, freestyle skiers/snowboarders, extreme white water rafters, etc.
The second group of people loves to watch the first group in great suspense.
So why do some people gamble with their lives for sport? Part of the motivation is the thrill experienced when we push ourselves to the limits of what is possible.
Living on the edge causes an exhilarating, intoxicating rush of emotions.
It is said that we are all capable of doing things that are generally considered impossible, stretching human accomplishment beyond our wildest dreams.
However, when considering physical strength, humans are pretty insignificant.
A flea can jump many times its body length.
If we could do that we could cover an entire football field in a single bound.
A whale can stay underwater for two hours at a time; camels can live for 50 days without water.
Our achievements in the physical realm are nothing compared to those of the animals around us.
Yet saying that, all those feats are insignificant compared to our strength in the area of character development.
We can get our thrills by pushing ourselves to 'growing' into people who we never thought possible and seeing accomplishments we never believed possible.
Our true strength lies in our ability for extraordinary personal growth and self-development.
Challenging ourselves with specific milestones that seem beyond our capabilities and then striving with incredible focus to reach them can, in fact, be more cutting edge than sky-diving.
Fighting with our natural inclinations, changing just one negative character trait and transforming ourselves into a new human being is harder than standing on a slab of ice for a week.
The training, conditioning, focus, belief in oneself, willpower, perseverance and endurance necessary to transform yourself into a 'better' human are the most limit-pushing activities available to mankind.
Real strength is not in stunts but in the personal development and the mastery of ourselves.