Kenyon Salo Speaks to Cape

You would think that a story packed with skydiving, visits to children’s hospitals, and jumps from large heights would leave the audience on the edge of their seat.  However, this was not the case for many of the Cape Henry students. Many thought that the speech was too long and that there was no message he was trying to convey.  At one point in the speech, Salo stood on top of a fifteen-foot ladder, saying the only one that was scared was the audience, and that he should not let the others around him hold him back and make his decisions for him.  One CHC freshman, Kade Keenan thought that this was a bad message to send because Salo was telling us to “not let others talk us out of bad decisions.” This is a bad message to send because we all make reckless decisions at some point.  Sometimes we need the advice of others to guide us down from a dangerous situation.

One CHC senior, Logan Tucker, felt as though Kenyon Salo was “trying to brag to us about his accomplishments instead of trying to inspire us.”  He gave a fifteen-minute story about his first experience skydiving with the Denver Bronco skydiving team and what he had to do to get onto the team.  However, at the end of the story, there was no message. All he did was brag about how he was a professional skydiver. Another one of his stories was about how instead of taking his final exam, he turned it in blank and spontaneously moved across the country to Colorado to “live in the moment.”  Now, this is a horrible message to spread to a group of middle and high school students. If we all dropped out of high school to live in the moment, then half of us would be homeless in ten years.

Living in the moment was one of his themes, so he challenged all of us to check something off of our bucket list, regardless of money or time.  He may not have realized this at the time, but most of us actually need to save money so that we can go to college, and again, not become homeless in ten years. The philosophy of “living in the moment” is good on paper, but is a very impractical way of thinking. Yes, by living in the moment will be fun at first, but in a short amount of time, many of us will lose all of our means to live in the moment.

This review might be a little bit harsh on Kenyon Salo, as he seemed to be a nice guy with good intentions to inspire us all and spread happiness.  However, spreading his messages to a bunch of high school kids could be counterintuitive as many might take his advice too seriously and end up jeopardizing their future.  His messages and advice that he gave had good intentions, but all in all, just wasn’t good advice.