How do we decide on the level of risk that we take voluntarily?.
- The danger of dying of diseases.
- The risk involved in sporting activities.
- Our inner sense of how far we can expose ourselves to risk.
Nowadays in the big cities, we expose ourselves to risk almost since we get up every day. For instance, when we cross the road, driving our car to go to the work, we can to be assaulted by a thief and just for a small sum of money he could murder us. These are only a few examples but there are much more and I am going to relate in the following paragraphs some of them.
The risks that I mentioned above, they cannot avoid them many times whether we live in a city, but there are other risks that we can avoid but however we expose ourselves. I mean the risks that many people take voluntarily each time that they light a cigarette, to drink alcohol, to take drugs, do not eat properly, do not doing physical exercises, and so on…
These bad habits that many people have, they will concern in their health and therefore they will be in danger of suffering diseases and they could die before than expected.
On the other hand, many people like to practice some kinds of sports, I have to include myself, like climbing, parachuting, skiing, play football, etc, where not only can we break a leg but even we could die.
In regard to the question as to how far we can expose ourselves to risk, from my point of view I think that it depends of each person and especially of the age that each one has. When I was younger I have dared to do many things that now I would not dare. Also it depends of the behavior of each person. There are people calmer with an inner sense of responsibility bigger than other people.
To sum up, there are a lot of risks around us but many of them we can avoid them and especially we have to teach to the children how they have to face them in order to they do not fall in some of them.
TOEFL listening lectures: A lecture from a physical science class