Polar explorer Erling Kagge: Why risk makes life meaningful | Big Think

Life is very much about taking risks. To walk to the North Pole or climb Everest is all about taking huge risks. But sometimes, it's even more risky doing nothing. If you lay on the sofa for too long, you risk getting some heart diseases. And of course, most accidents in life actually happen in the kitchen, if not the car hits you first.

One of the greatest climbers in history, one of my big heroes, Tenzing Norgay, didn't die from falling down the mountain; he died from lung cancer because he was smoking all the time. This color happens again and again. So I think, first of all, you need to take risks; that's part of life. But having said that, to me, the most important after that is to be well prepared.

I have always been extremely well prepared for my expeditions. So, for me, it hasn't been as dangerous as it would have been for other people. But if it hadn't been dangerous walking to the North Pole or climbing Mount Everest, I would never have done it. It's part of life. It's part of what gives it meaning.

Also, this kind of little dimension of fear or danger makes you feel that you're very much present in your own life. You don't really care about anything but what's happening there and then. And, of course, that's a feeling that can't hurt you of their life. But once in a while, it's a beautiful feeling.

I think in life, you need some uncertainty. Like, you know, it's quite often I hear people, they like, you know, they don't want to have any uncertainty in life at all. I think that's a big mistake because you need variation in your life. You need to be surprised; you need novelty.

Because if you don't have it, time narrows in. Everything moves on really fast quickly, and also the universe around you, the space around someone else. If you know what's going to happen in the next minute or the next day, this is a way to feel that your life is— a way to feel present in your life is to take risks and feel this kind of that not everything is certain.

That it could be some revolutions ahead. That's just, you know, the way to live a rich life. So, hold this idea about a riskless society; it's a huge misunderstanding. It's nice that the government tries to help us in many different ways, but we need to be able to risk something.

I think every morning you wake up, you make all the choices through the day— it's easier, more difficult options. Of course, it's very tempting for all of us to choose the easiest option in life. The problematic side to that is that then you're not really laying longer a free human being because it's predetermined what you're going to do throughout the whole day.

Because it always is to choose the easiest option. So, to live a free life, you actually have to go for the most difficult options quite often in your life. So that's kind of a huge misunderstanding: that the way to make a life beautiful, the way to have a happy life, is to go for the easiest options.

Get smarter, faster, with new videos daily at 5 a.m. Eastern.