Alex Honnold

You're a young 20s man living alone in a car, like wanting to be better at something than you are, but not quite knowing the way and not knowing what you're doing with your life.

So no, so obviously-

There was tons of emotional turmoil throughout it.

But no, I mean, retrospectively, it's like amazing.

Yeah, honestly, my dad passing away should be the beginning of that graph.

This should basically start at 19.

Because at 18, I went to university.

And so then starting at 19, I guess, I went on the road.

Well, I mean, obviously it was, you know, it's sad.

It's hard.

Like, and especially now I'm sort of like, oh, it's too bad that I don't have a relationship with my dad.

And he doesn't, you know, that my kids don't have a grandfather and all that kind of, you know, it's like, yeah, it's tough.

I think that the most immediate impact that I had maybe was just reminding me of my own mortality.

You know, I mean, he died unexpectedly at 55, just fell over in the airport and just fell over dead, like heart attack.

And so, you know, I mean, I think that that reminder of my own mortality has had a big impact on my career, my life, you know, my climbing world, whatever.

One might not expect you to go, quote unquote, do risky things because of... Well, no, because the thing is, I think one of the reasons that people don't do risky things is because they have this...

you know, mistaken idea that they can live forever, basically.

And basically because people don't want to think about their own mortality.

And so they're like, oh, I don't want to take any risks.

I could die.