boys being 'wild at heart'

So I was at one of the two homes where I do some private tutoring. This family's got 3 boys, 1 little girl (who's crazy cute!), and 1 infant girl. I tutor the eldest son in math. Today, we got to talking about camping and somehow got on the topic of adventure & getting hurt. Pretty soon, I had all 3 kids telling me about injuries they had suffered doing stupid stuff. Only they didn't think it was stupid.

They were bragging about the injury like it was a badge of courage! Smiling widely and laughing about the stories as they were telling them, I heard tales of having a face scrubbed into the sand because of a wave crashing down on them and nearly drowning, jumping off a tree and breaking an arm, hitting heads against stuff, etc. I found myself sharing stories of my own injuries as a kid, too.

It was funny. From an objective outside view, one would be thinking "what a stupid thing to do!" but here we were, very much relishing the chance to tell these stories and laugh about them. I guess that's the rub, that we lived to tell, and managed to get away without major damage. That's the thing tho. Somewhere along the way, we change to live 'safely', and find ourselves not really 'living' at all.

Reminds me of the John Eldredge book, Wild at Heart....