Might as well Jump
Just like the Van Halen song suggests:
“I get up and nothin' gets me down
You got it tough, I've seen the toughest around
And I know, baby, just how you feel
You got to roll with the punches and get to what's real.”
On December 4, 2018, I jumped.
I awoke to this fact: I was caught up in the mantra “Work Hard” but wasn’t able to mitigate the balance for “Play Hard” and found myself mired down and in the trappings of fears fairly typical of life—psychological stress, financial worries, paperwork, chores, etc. and all compounding. I was on that hamster wheel—I had voluntarily bought a nonstop one way ticket to ride that fucking wheel. I had been unconsciously choosing to live in a safe, passionless state, albeit, a velvet rut of an existence, surrounded by the mundane and trivial. My inner sloth was living rent-free in my brain totally squatting on my creativity, fire and agency to engage in the life I had once imagined. I had imagined a life full of adventure—but I just couldn’t get there. Something had to shift.
It required a total shift in mind, body, and spirit. I needed to experience my body re-engage on a primal level. I needed to face my fears and I needed a symbolic and potent act to secure the change I was seeking. Now, I’ve done some pretty risky things in my life and I wouldn’t call myself a ‘thrill seeker’, but I knew jumping out of perfectly good airplane was pretty close to the definition of such a ‘thrill’ but I have chosen to identify more with the ‘seeker’ part of that pairing.
“Ah, might as well jump (jump)
Might as well jump
Go ahead and jump (jump)
Go ahead and jump
Ow, oh, hey, you
Who said that?
Baby, how you been?
You say you don't know
You won't know until you begin.”
The first time I drove out to meet the plane for my tandem jump, the winds were too high and unpredictable so I had to postpone for another weekend. I felt like that trip was just going through the motions in preparation for the real jump which was basically seamless. I arrived, checked in, got fitted for the gear, met my tandem partner, Joe, and loaded into the plane. To fly tandem with a pro like Joe, I basically had to sit on his lap and he decided when we’d exit the plane. And, believe me when I say, leaving that decision to Joe was the hardest part! I had to trust and I finally faced letting go of all the controls going off in my mind and body. It was one of the scariest (and, yes, thrilling) experiences I have ever had.
I was confronted with all of the fears, self-limiting beliefs, controls and defenses against feeling anything bad and my body was shaking violently as if from childhood up to the moment before letting go. Here it was—that profound single ceremony I had set intentionally to move forward boldly with my life, to seek balance and reengage with life more fully. I remember telling myself not to just disconnect as I let go. I wanted to be completely aware and present with what I was experiencing.
Turns out this wasn’t a problem as the adrenaline ramped up and all my senses switched on as my body caught the wind for the first time outside of the plane and I watched the open portal move from my grasp—my hands now extended into the rush…I was free falling.
It was a thunderous windy experience as my body tried to catch up to its acceleration which was similar to riding a roller coaster. My skin wrinkled in the acceleration. I felt caught up in this moment, untethered. I had given myself to the experience of this moment and thoughts of fear vanished. It was as if the fear resided solely with the initial letting go and I found this resonated with my life experience. The wisdom from experiencing letting go now lives in me viscerally as a core truth.
The land below was surreal as if I’d never touch it. However, when Joe launched the parachute, something different happened. Suddenly the wind wasn’t howling, there was instead a silence as I dangled under the canopy, suspended in the sky with the world below my feet. In that moment, I knew. There was nothing I couldn’t do. There was nothing stopping me from living my best life. Including myself.
“Ah, might as well jump (jump)
Go ahead and jump
Might as well jump (jump)
Go ahead and jump
Jump
Might as well jump (jump)
Go ahead and jump
Get it in, jump (jump)
Go ahead and jump
Jump
Jump
Jump
Jump.”
Songwriters: Alex Van Halen / David Roth / Edward Van Halen
~ Michelle John, PhD, LPC-S, SEP