heights and fears !!!

I was watching a documentary on NatGeo last time I was home. The documentary was about an insanely passionate guy (otherwise why would he be on NatGeo, smirk ;-) ) who was into rope walking at extreme heights. He was shown practicing all alone in serene jungles first with low lying ropes just tied across two trees and then once across a serene lake with the rope barely 5 feet above the water surface. He is fond of doing it all with barest of equipment, just a waist belt preventing him from falling is what is visible.

He then climbed on the rope tied across two huge hills and started walking across trying to balance himself through the use of his body movements and carefully placing one step after the other in dance like rhythm. One can easily see the amount of courage and concentration that goes in here and people with humanely sense won't even dream of doing of this act. In the background this guy spoke one excellent line which rings in my mind every now and then. "I had practiced the same moves trying to walk over the rope on ground at two feet height, I was doing perfect and now when I am trying to do the same at several thousand feet, I feel the jitters and the journey becomes so arduous. At the height nothing else changes it is the same rope but it is I which has changed." How true !!