In less than twelve hours I will jump out of a plane.
I’ve wanted to skydive for a long time. Forever? Since before I started having the flying dreams, I think, so frequent and tangible that the power of personal flight started to feel familiar.
The flying – the being high above the ground part – is familiar. Even the rushing quickly towards the ground part, because, honestly, sometimes I am not quite so pro at the dream-flying. It always turns out okay.
The voluntarily leaping out of a plane in midair, no so familiar.
Mildly terrifying, actually.
That’s the paradox. There’s this thing I want to do, and I know I’m going to love it because I’ve dreamt of it for years. Yet there’s the tiny problem of getting underway. One second of hard part – the difficulty of taking one step and letting gravity take its course, and then fifteen thousand feet of dream.
That first step is the only thing I’m afraid of. At the moment. And not just tomorrow. In general. I’m afraid of single steps, but obsessed with what comes after.
Just afraid of that one step.
Poll me again on that one in the morning.
Erica Jong would be proud of this.
Also, your fear of that first step reminds me of something I told my boss yesterday. In high school, I worked for a man who was fond of telling us that the hardest part of any project is the beginning 5% and the concluding 5%, and that the middle 90% was easy. In other words, getting started and finishing up anything were the most difficult parts of anything.
It’ll be simple to remember in this case that your beginning 5% is stepping out into free fall and your ending 5% will be that knowing where/when to pull that cord and sticking that landing.
Might be simple, but it sure ain’t easy.
Good luck, man.
Matt – Of course, you entirely understood the point of my obliquely written post. I feel like this is a metaphor – both for all the first steps I’ve made over the last few years, and for the big ones I’ve yet to take.
Most of them are pretty simple, but not many are easy.