I'm always perusing around the internet looking and reading stories related to adventure and travel - occasionally those stories unlock tales of disaster, heroism...and death. However, most people who live adventurous lives understand the risks, and they would rather die doing what they love than by other, more random means.
In 2008, Roger Stone gave his life so that the rest of his crew on board their sinking boat would make it out unharmed. He was was a safety officer on board a yacht headed from Galveston Texas to Vera-Cruz (a 600 mile journey). He was with a team of college students competing in the rugged Regata De Amigos.
When a freak accident led to the immediate floundering of the vessel, Stone made sure everyone else was off the boat safely before he turned his attention to his own fate - but by then it was too late.
Kenneth Miller of Reader's Digest wrote the following article about the disaster and Stone's heroism:
I'm reminded, when I read such stories, of a quote from the Swiss writer Henri Frederic Amiel:
Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies.
Why is this so? Because the natural human instinct is to gain, not to lose. All throughout history we have account after account of a common man (or woman) making tremendous sacrifices that defy the law. If it was commonplace, it wouldn't be a sacrifice. If the head entity and establishment was built around the philosophy, "loss for me = gain for others" then there really would be no means to assume a position of power.
On a human level, such acts are truly the most basic form of love. Roger Stone knew that the pain his wife and family would endure would be far less than what he would endure were he to selflessly save himself rather than his friends. That said, his act was not out of fear of his own potential misgivings - it was a basic instinct embedded into his entire body. Love is like that, it can manifest itself so quick and so powerful that reason and intellect are discarded in place of sacrifice.
Losing your life on an adventure doing something you love, while saving the lives of people you love, is not something to take lightly. Sacrifice may not, as Amiel reminds us, be the Law of Society - But it is the Law of Humanity
After re-reading the readers digest article...I really wish they would take those million advertisements off their site....good grief. Its hard to concentrate on the story...
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