Take a Leap

One of the greatest things I’ve ever done was formulated when having a conversation with a friend a couple of hours past midnight, a time when most meaningful conversations happen.


“So,” my friend Loren asked groggily and seemingly barely interested from a couch on the opposite side of the room, “what do you want to do before you die?”


I was struck by the finality and perhaps morbidness of the question: but I knew that this was a guy who, like me, loathes the fickleness of most everyday chit-chatty conversations and longs or a discussion of issues that are deep/too serious (depending on your point of view). I relished the moment and took a breath, thinking about the question before responding to it.


“Go skydiving,” I said.


“Yeah…” he said, liking that response. “I want to tour the Taylor guitar factory.”


Loren is also a musician/hippie, depending on your point of view.


We were both silent after that, imagining guitars and parachutes to the sounds of traffic and the low thudding of bass sounds from the bars in the nearby Strip of Lafayette. The growing shadows in the living room of Loren’s rent-house began to blend into sleep when Loren asked, “What else?”


“I want to go a road trip before I die,” I said. “How about you?”


“I want to go surfing.” Hence the hippie.


Sleepiness was slowly receding as each idea led to another.


“I want to build a bonfire and go camping on the beach.”


“I haven’t been to Disneyland since I was four. It’d be fun to go back.”


“And, of course, see Hollywood.”


“Yeah,” I agreed, feeling the lack of sleep slowly overpowering the adrenaline rush of wishful thinking. “That’d be great.”


Another silent lull, this one making me gradually surrender to the inviting arms of sleep.


“Ya know,” Loren said, “we could knock all these dreams out in one big road trip.”


Rule of thumb: I’ve learned that it’s dangerous to have an idealistic dreamer like me around.


When there are two of us in close quarters, we are highly explosive.


Five months later, Loren, his brother Buddy, and I arrive at my most highly anticipated stop on our road trip to California: Paris Valley Skydiving. Sitting in the rest area, waiting for our turn to take off, I took a personal inventory of my feelings. Was I nervous? I felt more anticipation than nervousness. This is not me saying that I am a brave person: a roach will prove that I’m not. However, unlike brown Hitlers less than an inch long that can survive a nuclear fallout, heights have never bothered me much. I had successfully divorced abandoning a plane mid-flight from death. However, whether I’d die by being mauled by an escaped kangaroo while boarding the plane or plummeting thousands of stories with a malfunctioning parachute, the end result was the same. And frankly, I didn’t want to die.


I’ll admit: the odds dying at the paws of a raging kangaroo are significantly lower than those of dying while skydiving. However, in one of those scenarios, I’d die regardless if I was doing something I loved or hated; if I died skydiving, at least I’d go out trying to fulfill a dream of mine.


Moral of this story: follow all of your reckless dreams.


Not quite. Keep reading.


When it was our turn to board the plane, we suited up in our skydiving gear and met our tandem buddies.These guys would be strapped onto us, knowing what to do during our descent. (Another reason I wasn’t worried: the guy strapped onto me said it was going to be his fifth skydive since that morning.)


The plane ride was jerky and loud (as rides in small planes typically are). When we reached our desired height, an employee opened the plane door. The whipping sound of wind overtook the plane cabin. I couldn’t hear anything anymore, but knew that our jumping order was first Buddy, then Loren, then I would jump out of the plane.


Everything had gone according to plan, but I had not prepared for the psychological reaction of seeing two of my closest friends JUMP OUT OF A PLANE. This was only emphasized when I saw firsthand that the physics inside the plane were different from outside. In other words, in the plane it was easy to recognize up and down. Therefore, when my friends left the plane, they didn’t just go down; they DROPPED.


Now I was no longer feeling merely anticipation. I was scared.


The next thing I knew, I was at the edge of the door and the tandem guy was counting down.


3…


2…


1.


The first thing I noticed was that the cacophony in the plane was gone. The wind was moving so fast that it resulted in silence. 


Unable to keep my mouth closed, it opened in a wide grin, because of the constant (but not unpleasant) feeling of going down a steep drop on a roller coaster. I could swear I tasted the wind, both pure and metallic, as it lapped my open mouth, but it could’ve been adrenaline making me think that.


The midday desert in California below you is surreal to see. So many colors sewn together in a natural quilt has no words.


Adding to this incredible experience was the fact that I was seeing the land, hearing and tasting the wind, smelling the air, and feeling the sky not through a medium like an airplane window, but experiencing it firsthand. As an imaginative child who always wanted to fly like Superman, I remember thinking, “I’m doing it! I’m really doing it!”


My message for you, readers, is not telling you to always take risks; prudence comes from being timely and careful. Rather, don’t be bogged down in your safety bubble only because it’s safe. Not always, but sometimes, it’s worth waiving your precautions and taking a risk.


No matter show safe you try to always be, sometimes a mauling kangaroo may still sneak up on you. So readers, take my advice for what it is, but don’t make your life so safe that you forget to live.


And every now and then, remember to take a leap.