Photo via flickr / Kevin Timothy

“Never give up on your dreams.”

It’s the mantra that teachers and basketball coaches have been preaching your whole life. Nobody who’s anybody would dare tell you any different, lest they find themselves portrayed as some Kevin Spacey-esque villain in the biopic of your life. Entire Hollywood movie franchises about unlikely hockey teams were built on these six words. And no group has embodied this ideal more than our extreme athletes.

That’s why we were puzzled to hear that Mexican kayaker Rafa Ortiz gave up on his three-year-old dream to go over Niagara Falls in a kayak this past weekend. Canoe & Kayak reports that Ortiz was ready to attempt the drop but after approaching the 167-foot waterfall on Sunday, Ortiz walked away from the stunt because he couldn’t get “that last positive feeling.”

But why? Ortiz has made huge drops before, like the 189-foot Palouse Falls in Washington last year. And some people who have tried to commit suicide at Niagara Falls have failed. In fact, this is precisely the reason Ortiz thought he could make it.

“The marginal landing zone that somehow has caught barrels and made survive a few suicide attempts, couldn’t give me confidence to sit in my boat and pull off the line,” wrote in a Facebook post. “Some drops are just meant to haunt you for the rest of your life… Some dreams are just meant to be dreams.“

If a few failed suicide attempts can’t convince you to follow through on your dreams, nothing will. Lesson: Never dream.

[via Canoe & Kayak]

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Michael Kolberg is The Sprawl Editor at Toronto Standard. Follow him on Twitter for jokes @mikeykolberg.

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