✈️ What I Learnt from Skydiving

I initially booked skydiving from a spontaneous desire to be interesting, and to be wild. The idea of skydiving represented to me Freedom itself. It was something that not many others spent money on but which I can. It was the way for me to express the frustration I have towards myself for not facing the fears in my life that holds me by my head.

It was easy to book, and it was something simply money can buy. And that thought I capitalised on. Self-expression, self-confidence, self-actualisation - these are things money cannot buy, and will never be able to buy. And I was obsessing about how nothing external, no amount of fame, validation, attractiveness, respect, nor love will ever create for someone a quiet confidence. No activity where the mind is disengaged from the soul will ever progress towards self-confidence.

But something as wild as skydiving does not require an ounce of self-confidence, or self-love for that matter, but simply the step of sacrificing money. Thats it. Once I spent the money, I had to go skydiving.

Shortly after I forgot about it and every thought around it, and got myself lost in a busyness that we call life. For months I was almost in a delirium, completely unaware of myself. However, when it came to be about a week before the booking, I panicked. Thoughts about Death hit really hard on my mind, and left me sleepless for the nights before. Skydiving at that point meant a full and hard, cold conscious confrontation with the mysterious darkness of Death. I constantly would imagine myself at the door of the plane, having the choice to jump out and sacrifice myself and completely lose myself. I could either NOT jump and never know what it would be like to die, or I could jump and discover for myself what so many men run away from.

Skydiving then became for me the most meaningful choice, and moreover, it became the pinnacle choice of my entire life. I placed this moment of jumping on the day of my very 21st birthday to make everything more poetic for that reason.

Lets skip to the moments before jumping

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Preparing the dive, I was introduced to an instructor who described all the mechanics for the landing, helping me put on the harness and overall my feeling of safety. I never asked or thought I wanted that feeling of safety and reassurance until he gave it so freely and so abundantly that the fear I once had VANISHED. But I realised that the fear of death I previously had merely got replaced by a fear of not feeling safe, and it resulted in an obsession to know beforehand what the experience is going to be like. I wanted to understand the experience before actually experiencing it.

But towards those moments before the actual dive, I felt that I almost dissociated from reality to cope with dealing with the experience. I had trouble comprehending that my entire life depended entirely in the hands of another - and I had no thought to comfort me except the fact that every man loves his own life, and that he will save me because he loves himself.

The fall was the complete opposite of terrifying, but merely thrilling. I did not need to choose to jump off, and that took away all the terror of the dive. I merely had to surrender. It made the experience so much lighter on my chest, and I smiled with huge bouts of joy because of this liberating realisation.

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Where was my fear of death then? Forgotten. And this is the sad lesson I did not learn from this fall. Death surely is a choice that we have to make, of our own free will. All of us has to confront death. Yes, it is true that it will take us regardless of whether we have accepted it, but we will have to confront it anyway after we die. And it will all be the same anyway.

How much am I clinging to life? How much do I do in service for myself so that I may continue to make breaths, continue to eat foods that make me feel good, or continue to live an all-comfortable life of luxury, fame, gratification, love, validation? How much do I do in my life just so that my life, which is fleetingly short in reality, will be one of only pleasure and not pain? What absolute buffoonery to live only for the pleasure or only for comfort, knowing that death, and the infinity of time lies beyond that moment. Life is but a collection of transient moments to a finite point, beyond which is the mysteriousness of eternity and absolute stillness.

That is the lesson which I did not learn. But I hope that I continue striving towards accepting my own death, completely and utterly. And I would imagine this is truly what self-confidence and self-actualisation really means.