On Ignoring the Risks.

There’s a tendency to assume that racing drivers must be a little crazy in order to do what they do, risking life and limb every time they go to work. Apparently it isn’t the case. I read once that several studies done on them indicate that racing drivers are actually unusually calm, well balanced people, at least when they’re out of the car. And yet I still wonder whether they must be lacking imagination and a certain type of awareness. In most us, those faculties naturally produce the projection of imagined possibilities which have us stepping back well out of the way of extreme risk.

But today I wondered whether the same might be true of surgeons. When they go to work – which is rather more frequently than racing drivers – it isn’t their own life and limb they’re putting at risk, but somebody else’s. Does that mean that they, too, are lacking imagination and a certain type of awareness, or might it be that they are low on compassion so they fret less about the consequences of their actions on somebody’s life? Or could it be that they learn to put up a barrier to such feelings so as to avoid unbearable stress every time they take up the scalpel?

None of these possibilities might be true, of course, but it’s an interesting thought.