Ever wondered what life would be like if you just let go of everything that you worried about, wanted to be different or were in a hurry to achieve? This week Son Number 2 in NZ threw himself off a bridge and down a 150 foot drop, held only by a piece of strong elastic. Something my niece had been pushing him to try ever since he got there.
After seeing his photos and confirming he was still alive. I asked him what it was like and could I do it too.
He described how it took 10 minutes to book in, 7 questions on health and safety disclaimer and £60 to secure him his turn. I say secure as the booking girl makes it clear, you don’t get your money back if you don’t jump.
At the top he watched the young man booked before him be goaded by his family to jump. Only to see the young man give into his fear and not do it. Son Number 2 knows life is a bit like the booking girls warning, you don’t get it back if you choose to not live it. He also knows he needs a strategy to achieve what he needs to do. So he decided that he was not going to over think things, he prepared himself by ‘not looking down’ while he walked across the bridge, knowing that seeing how high it was would make him second guess himself. Then he stopped thinking altogether about what was going to happen in the next 30 seconds. Not thinking about how it would feel or what could happen to him, allowed him to just ‘go with it’. As he shuffled to the edge (his feet were tied together), the guy checked his harness once more and then he jumped! Hands and arms spread out wide, eyes fully open and he began to feel that free fall for the next 7 seconds before bouncing just above the canyon water.
When I asked him what did it feel like, he said during the free fall you couldn’t feel any part of your body, you were entirely weightless not like underwater as you can feel something around you in water. No totally weightless like your muscles were jelly. As soon as you get to the bottom of your piece of elastic your body immediately feels again.
He reckons there are two types of people that do this, those that are scared but do it to test themselves and others who are adrenalin hounds who go for the thrill. I think the fact he wants to do it again and work there puts him in the second group (maybe?). Although Son Number 2 is sensible he understands fear is a killer too, he knows that saying no too many times in life will mean he will not get to experience the best that it has to offer. And although things are scary there are big benefits to jumping off into something you have no idea what it will be like. Both my sons are doing that right now and I must admit to being very proud of them both.
I think Son Number 2’s approach to this jump was great. Not looking down and scaring yourself about an experience was a great tactic. When watching the guy before him being pressurised by others and bottling he didn’t think he would follow suit, he’s an individual with his own mind, he doesn’t have to follow a pack. When he got there he just went for it, his rationale being if it went wrong you only free fall and the elastic would only break when it pulled taut at a few metres above the river, then he would have the water to break his fall. Yes he is not a mindless adrenalin hound he has thought through, the risks, how to overcome his fear in the pursuit of feeling something in life he might never get if he bottled like the first guy.
And what about those 7 seconds of free fall? Is that what giving up worrying, striving, fearing in day to day life could be like? I wonder? Feeling weightless, not held down. As mostly in life you have no control, what will happen ultimately is not within your gift, things change, people leave, we all get older etc etc – there is little but our attitude to ‘change’ that we can control. I remember reading an article about the failed suicides off the Golden Gate Bridge. The reports about the survivors (ie those who failed to kill themselves) where it talked about how they asked the question “what did you think after you jumped”, all of them said that although they had major worries which led to them going up on the bridge with the intention of killing themselves in the first place, that once they had jumped off the bridge, the ONLY worry they then realised they had, was that they had just jumped off that bridge to what they expected was their own end.
So perhaps you gain a perspective you can’t get with both your feet on the ground. I am thinking that 7 seconds of free falling at least daily is a good habit to form, it could just save my life.
My son is booking me up for the jump in November, I may get to experience my own 7 seconds of free fall, so I intend to practice everyday to be ready for it………
wherethehellisgillian 