I’ve recently taken a deep dive into the life of 40 year old Alex Honnold. He may be the only person able to scale a 3,000 foot granite wall without so much as a second thought.

Honnold is known for his free solo ascents. His most recent being 101 Taipei Skyscraper in Taiwan. The climb was live streamed on Netflix and I for one watched in horror for the entire hour and a half as he climbed the building with no gear at all. What’s even more unbelievable, is the fact that this climb wasn’t his most dangerous or hardest ascent yet.

The man has climbed El Capitan, Half Dome, and El Sendero Luminoso. All without the help of ropes and harnesses. Even more shockingly, he has a wife and children who support him in this rather unique pursuit of happiness.

 My initial reaction to learning about Alex was questioning whether or not he had an ounce of fear in his body. Come to find out, scientists had the same question and conducted a scan on his brain. The scan revealed that his amygdala doesn’t react the same way the brain generally would when faced with fear provoking situations. During a climb, the only time his amygdala’s activity spiked was wondering whether he brought enough “Technical Sugar Products” for lunch. Which is what he famously refers to snacks as.

 I horrifically learned that Honnold is said to have eaten cold beans out of the can with a spatula as doing dishes was in his words “a waste of resources”. He treats calories as necessary, but devoid of joy. 

Alex even spent years living in a Ford Econoline Van. Proving that it doesn’t take much more than a dream and pursuit of it (or in his case a broken amygdala) to become a world class athlete and Oscar winner. Even after he purchased a house he lived in the van in his driveway for weeks because he claimed that his living room felt too spacious and confusing. 

In his Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo, there is a moment where Alex is hanging by his fingertips over a literal cliff edge, and his heart rate is lower than mine while trying to find my keys. He isn’t a daredevil; he’s a professional perfectionist and his office is a beautiful scene with zero floor space. 

Ultimately, his legacy isn’t about lack of fear, rather the almost obsessive way he seems to dismantle fear. He reminds us that the impossible is just a collection of manageable problems that we are yet to spend enough time visualizing. Whether he’s scaling granite, or funding solar grids from the back of a van, he is living proof that greatness doesn’t require a death wish, just the audacity to treat terror like a well rehearsed performance.