Let me start by saying that I don’t like heights.
Not even a little.
And I doubted that would ever change…
….but I wanted it to.
Because of my fear of heights, I was thinking that this cliff diving thing was going to be a lot harder for me than it actually was.
Don’t get me wrong, it still had its difficulties.
When we got to the place, I remember looking down from the wooden deck they made on top of the cliff and thinking, ‘That doesn’t actually look all that bad.’
And because that’s what I thought, I was ready to jump.
No hesitations. No worries. No fears.
I was more nervous about the actual jumping (I didn’t want to slip on the wooden deck) than the ‘this is 30ft up in the air’ part of it.
And so I heard myself say, “I’ll go first.”
I guess I also didn’t want to think about the actual ‘I’m about to jump off a 30ft cliff’ part of it for too long either.
And how long can you really think about that when you’re going first?
So, everyone’s eyes on me, I took a deep breath and started my sprint across the deck.
I made it to the end of the deck, still feeling confident in my assumption that this wasn’t really all that bad.
Cool, calm, and collect.
Then my feet left the dock.
That’s when I really how completely and utterly wrong I was about the height.
There’s something about having absolutely nothing underneath your feet and free falling that triggers fear.
And that’s when it’s too late to change your mind.
I wasn’t planning on shouting, but things change when fear comes into the picture.
I also hadn’t planned on my arms and legs flailing around as I hit the water, but fear decided to change that, too.
Go figure.
So instead of a nicely formed pencil dive, my arms and feet were involuntarily waving around in every direction. Then they remembered, just a little too late, that I had planned on doing a pencil dive. By that time I was already meeting the water.
It was a harsh meeting. Despite hitting the water, you’re still falling, just a little slower.
Then you stop falling and you’re kicking for the surface. And just when you think you won’t find it, you break though. You come up gasping for air and trying to get rid of all the water that went up your nose.
And then you look up at the cliff. And you can’t believe you just willingly jumped off of it.
And you start to feel like you’re a little bit crazy…
…but you’re also pretty proud of yourself, too.
It maybe wasn’t quite the jump I had initially pictured in my head but, hey, I did it. And I had several more chances to perfect my form.
In fact, I jumped off 5 more times. And, if I do say so myself, I think my pencil dive was quite lovely by fourth and fifth jump.
I’m not really sure exactly why I kept jumping. At one point, just after I had jumped, I looked back up at the cliff and wondered why I thought this was fun.
I guess there’s something addicting about being free from fear. Once you get past your initial doubts and decide you can do something, it becomes so much easier. That doesn’t mean that all of your fear is gone, but you start to realize that you really can do it and your fear doesn’t have to limit you.
And suddenly you’re jumping off a cliff multiple times.
Take that, fear!
Video of me jumping:
