This is also applicable in part to sky-diving, so when the opportunity came to step out of a plane and plummet at 120 miles an hour toward the ground, I jumped at it - no pun intended. It was something I had always wanted to do, and I felt that perhaps I was up to it.
I went with four people from work, and we spent most of the day learning form, procedure, system, and safety. It had been an overcast day, and as regulations would not allow student jumps to proceed under such conditions, there had been delays while the haze cleared. The schedule was pushed forward, and as a result, our group had to wait for an available flight, although we had finished with our instruction. I had an hour and a half to consider what I was planning on doing. Without the instructor to focus on and with nothing to occupy my mind, I sat outside with my friends joking around but primarily obsessing about what I would be doing in the next few hours.
After the interminable wait, our group was called to prepare; we got into our jumpsuits, had ourselves strapped into the parachutes, and went through several safety checks. We then headed for the plane. I find it odd, looking back, what one never considers in certain situations. When I thought of the parachute pack, I thought of how it looked, and how it would be strapped on; I thought of how the parachute would open, and how it would fly and how I would control it; I never thought about the fact that it weighs forty pounds, the equivalent of carrying a five-gallon Sparklett's water bottle on one's back.
Although the reality of my situation solidified once I was on the plane, I will not say that the flight up was nerve-racking. I was apprehensive, a fact I readily admit with an expectation of understanding. It is a nervousness which closely resembles, at least to me, that which precedes making a class presentation, but slightly intensified. The nervousness increased with every minute, every hundred feet, every slow circle of the landing zone. A specific moment which stands out in my mind is that at which I made the simple but, under the circumstances, very profound realization that I would not be returning to the ground in that plane. Drawing out this tension was the fact that, because I was the first one into the plane, I would be the last one out the door. As I finally approached the open square in the plane and took my position, the apprehension had reached its peak.
It has occurred to me since that all of my victories over hesitation and fear were, up to that point, brought about by necessity. The necessity, however, was not external but internal. Lives had never depended on my facing fear; nor had friendships or jobs or grades. Rather, it was my own psyche - my ego, my self-image, my determination to succeed (and, in a few aberrant cases, a pitiful desperation) - which began forcing me to do those things which scared me. I considered later that stepping out of the plane might have been different; I had, after all, paid nearly four hundred dollars for this opportunity, and to back out at this point would not provide for a refund. I rejected this possibility, however. Standing at the edge of twelve thousand and five hundred feet, I was not thinking about my money; the only thing I was thinking about was how I would face myself if I failed to take that last step.
Finding oneself at the last step is in itself an experience. To look out into that twelve and a half thousand feet of empty air and see the expanse of earth lying below, with its thin skin of buildings and roadways now almost indistinguishable - to step to the edge of the plane and feel the wind whipping past - to hear the roar of that wind over the drone of the engines and consider the amount of open space into which one will jump - is a very focusing experience. At the same time, however, at this point where nervousness should have completely overwhelmed my senses, I found that it instead began to clear. Though I did not consciously block it out, it nevertheless faded as my mind became completely occupied with the procedure I would have to follow from that point on.
With only seconds having passed since I came to the doorway, the procedure began: check with the instructor on my right; look forward; lean out; lean in; lean out and step out; wait four seconds, then relax into an arched position, knees bent, arms out, and hips downward. It sounds very precise and straightforward when one hears it on the ground; the actual experience, for a novice, is neither. Though I did well, there were four or five seconds following the initial jump during which I went into a sort of quasi-shock, thinking not of the procedure but only of the fact that I was falling, and that although the ground was still very far away, it would approach very rapidly.
I returned to a state of complete awareness, however, and followed each step of the skydive until that hoped-for moment when I pulled the ripcord and felt the parachute open above me. It opened perfectly, and as I floated silently above the valley, with nothing surrounding me but air for almost five thousand feet in every direction, I had two thoughts. The first was Thank you God thank you thank you thank you, and it was accompanied by an intense exhilaration.
The second thought, also accompanied by exhilaration (this feeling would pervade my thoughts for at least another hour) but more coherent, was that I had done it. Despite the fear I had of jumping out of a plane, I had stepped to the doorway and then beyond. I had gotten past the fear and had beaten it. Never before had this conquest been so apparent; skydiving had, in a single second, exemplified a mental series of events which had never been so concise. The experience had focused and defined my drive to overcome my fears, and I realized that if I was able to conquer such a direct and immediate fear, it was possible to conquer all others. Though it sounds like an inspirational cliché, it had shown me that my determination was stronger than my fear.
