Why I Skydive: The Best Things in Life are Placed on the Other Side of Fear
I’ll never forget my first time skydiving. Although I didn’t know it at the time, it was one of the most unexpected life changing moments of my early adulthood. For most, their first time jumping out of a plane was probably their only time. For me, it was the beginning of a whole new world.
A tandem skydive is something that had always been on my bucket list. I made an attempt to do one for my best friend, Bree’s birthday when I was 17 and she was turning 16. Then again when I was turning 18 and my dad 50. Something always got in the way. I knew I would do it eventually, but the longer and longer I put it off the more scary it became.
Kali Amoah is one of my best and most free-spirited friends in this life, and also happens to be my sorority big (although we both dropped). It was during my Freshman year of college and her Sophomore year that we made the pact to take the skydiving course at OSU together before she graduated. Fast forward to her last semester; and there we were, sitting in front of a 40-year-old man who has jumped out of an airplane thousands of times. OSU was one of the only two universities in North America that offered class credit for such an experience, and although I had always imagined my first time skydiving would be a tandem, the class was meant to teach students how to jump solo, so I decided to rise to the occasion. After just 9 hours of training, it was time for me to make my first skydive.
My first jump out of a “perfectly good airplane” was unbelievably liberating. Not only because it was something that I had wanted to do my entire life, but because the moments leading up to it were extremely nerve-racking.
You drive almost two hours just to then sit in a hanger for a few more hours, awaiting your turn, both anxious and excited. Then, your name is finally called to get all geared up… just to wait longer sitting in your jumpsuit with your rig on. The buildup is unbelievable. Finally, your camera man calls you over and gets you all pumped up for the jump. “What are we doing today?” he asks, with a red blinking light flashing from in front of him. “Jumping out of a plane,” you yell back pumping your fists in the air. “And why would you do that?” he questions skeptically, although you know he has done it hundreds of times before. You look over at Kali and you say casually, “She asked me to, I said ‘sure’,”.
Next, you walk up to the plane with your instructor. You climb the stairs and high-five everyone as you walk on, still unbelievably pumped up. Time for take off- and although you have been unphased during take off in nearly hundreds of planes before, the second you feel the airplane leave the ground, your stomach drops- shit just got real.
The ride up is about 20 minutes, but about 5 minutes in, you are shocked by an extremely loud buzzing and the feeling of wind on your face. They have opened up the door of the plane; and you realize this is an aspect of skydiving you had not considered before. The door of the plane would have to be opened in order for you to jump out of it. Hoooly shit.
You try to keep your cool in front of your instructor and the camera man, but in your head you are repeating the steps of your jump over and over again, overthinking every little detail. Then, upon hearing a loud “whoosh” and feeling a change in pressure, your stomach drops once again. You realize the first set of tandems has exited the airplane, and your turn is soon approaching. The time has come. You inch toward the door of the plane, and before you have time to freak out, you are being shaken by each of your instructors that it looks good to go. This is the moment you have been waiting for. You take a deep breath. Inhale, exhale, JUMP!
Before you know it, you are gone, watching the wing of the airplane fly away from you as you’re dropping 120 mph towards the ground. You have done it! And now, everything that happened before is forgotten, and you are flying. FLYING!
Soon enough it is time to pull your chute out. When you end up under canopy, you check to make sure your parachute is working properly. Then, finally, you have a moment to breathe. You take it all in. You’ve never felt anything like this before. You are ALIVE! You. Are. Liberated.
You reach the ground and cannot believe what has just happened. “So, do you want to get you’re A-license?” the camera man asked me. Kali had been trying to convince me to do so since she completed her first jump a week before, and although I really was interested, it was extremely expensive, and I wasn’t sure if I could dedicat $2,000 to something I had not considered for more than a week or so. However, in the heat of the moment, along with the pressure from Kali that these were our “last months together”, I agreed. And it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made to date.
Fast forward one month.
I remember one particular Tuesday morning in July on the way to Start Skydiving with Kali. She was now on jump number 6 and I was on number 4. Start Skydiving was in Middletown, Ohio, about an hour and a half away from us. Kali and I had done the drive a few times now, and it was usually quite fun. It was a time for us to bond before she left for Medical School in Vermont. However, this particular drive, I could not even handle playing music. I could not handle speaking of anything other than the technicalities of the dive that I was about to complete that day, because I was So. Damn. Afraid.
It was the first dive that I was truly scared for. We were going to be doing barrel rolls, front flips, and back flips. Although these sounded fun, we were forcing ourselves to get unstable in the air, so that we could learn how to get stable again in the case that we were ever alone and lost stability, we would not panic. Well, panicking was an understatement for my behavior in the car that day.
Although I knew I would be completely safe because an instructor was there with me, I was still unbelievably terrified, and I wasn’t quite sure why. For one, the last time I had jumped was almost a month prior, which created fear in itself that I would be out of practice. To add onto that, during my last jump beforehand, I had lost stability leaving the door and ended up on my back, unable to see the ground. I also had been with Kali the day she made this jump, and she was extremely nervous as well, which gave me more reason to fret. No matter how many experienced divers told her it was one of the most fun jumps of the licensing process, it didn’t make her any less scared. I remember being extremely confused as to why she was so nervous. She had already completed her first jump, wasn’t the scariest part over? Now I was in her shoes. There was something about this jump…
Throughout the drive, I became more and more overwhelmed. I thought to myself “What did I get myself into? Why did I agree to getting a $2,000 skydiving license when it was something I’d never even thought to do before?” As we neared closer and closer to Middletown, I worked myself into a tizzy. “I’m not cut out for this,” I told Kali, “If my dad had not already helped payed for this, I would just quit now.” I just kept repeating to myself, “What was I thinking to agree to something like this?”
As we exited the highway and were about 10 minutes out, I really began to panic. I actually started crying. “I can’t do this,” I repeated, over and over, “I don’t want to.” Kali assured me that if it came down to it, I didn’t have to do anything, but she also urged me to overcome my fear. She was telling me how she’s been doing a lot of thinking about how important it is to get comfortable in the uncomfortable, or else we’ll never grow. This is when she pulled out a YouTube video of Will Smith skydiving with his family. Kali had been going through Skydiving black holes on YouTube that week. I never would have expected it, but that video has stuck with me since. I think of it almost every day- not because of the skydiving, but because of the message.
Smith discusses his tandem skydiving experience, and how he was completely bugging out the night before, going up in the plane, and as he approached the door, but the second he left the plane, that was when he felt bliss. Many skydivers have discussed this same feeling with me. Why are we so scared when we’re in the plane in safety, then so relieved, the second we are falling 120 mph towards the earth? Smith described it as this: “(After jumping out) At the point of maximum danger, is the point of minimum fear. The lesson for me is: why were you scared in your bed the night before? What do you need that fear for? Everything up to the stepping out, there’s actually no reason to be scared. And then all of a sudden, in that moment where you should be terrified, is the most blissful experience of your life. And God placed the best things in life on the other side of fear.” This video got me thinking- skydiving really was pushing me out of my comfort zone. And it was then, that I began to take the lessons I was learning in skydiving out into my daily life as well.
After all of that, I didn’t end up jumping that day because of clouds. By the time we arrived, the drop zone was completely cleared out. I felt relieved to say the least. I went back and completed the dive within a few days; and although I was still nervous, I had definitely gotten the worst of it out in the car with Kali that first day.
It ended up being a blast! Once I completed my first barrel roll, I realized it was just playing around in the air; and there was nothing scary about it. By the time I reached the ground and people were asking which dive I just completed, I was responding with a casual “flips n’ shit”. And although dives 1 through 3 were extremely fun and exhilarating, It was dive number 4, or “flips n’ shit” for short, that made me fall in love with skydiving. The best things in life truly are placed on the other end of fear.