Before I begin the story of how skydiving changed my life, you should know that I attempted to skydive three times. I have successfully jumped only once. Now I know you might be thinking I chickened out, and that’s exactly what did NOT happen. Mother Nature just didn’t want me jumping off a plane the first two times. It was cloudy, I signed the waivers and paid my fees. Shoot, I even waited about two hours to see if the sky cleared up. The important part about this is that it eventually happened. 

Many people talk about how skydiving eventually changes your life, but for me it was more like every failed attempt taught me something as well. I was a different person every single attempt and was going through different life stages, but this is what I learned.

Bad Times With Great People Are Always Memorable

As I said earlier, I was denied my skydiving experience twice, but lucky for me I was with great company. Each failed attempt saw that everything that could’ve gone wrong did. I learned that every group needs someone that can just laugh at everything that didn’t happen. To make it clear, a couple of the things that went wrong were; we ate heavy Mexican food and got sleepy before we went out and were late into going downtown, we slept on the train downtown so we were all groggy, we finished eating at about 12:30 a.m., we were able to get ONE drink before last call, we took 40 minutes to find a taxi back to our hotel, we didn’t have the chance to get a tattoo because we woke up late the next day, I got into a car accident on the freeway, the sushi I ate wasn’t very good, and three of my friends got to skydive without me before the sky got too cloudy. Even with all that happened, I would not trade those experiences for anything. 

Worrying Isn’t Fun

Sure, you could panic all that you want, but that doesn’t change anything. Experiences are all about getting out of your comfort zone to plain out feel. Skydiving made me go through practically every emotion you can think of. Signing the liability form made me sad, hopping on that plane had me scared, and hanging my feet out the plane made me excited. I begin to wonder what would’ve happened if I would’ve worried the entire time, how can you focus on the experience by worrying what can go wrong? It’s not possible to enjoy it 100%. I guess what I mean to say is that skydiving taught me that worrying isn’t necessary, whatever happens, happens and I should always be alright with that. The most important thing to do is to just feel. 

Jumping Out Of A Plane Isn’t All That Scary

I’ve done a couple of scary things in my life, I’ve cliff dived into freezing water, I’ve walked in subways at 3 o’clock in the morning by myself, and I mean I have jumped out of a well functioned airplane. Those things were pretty terrifying, but what was scarier to me was thinking that I may never get to experience that feeling ever. 

Both times I was not permitted to jump, a part of me was relieved, but a bigger part of me was utterly disappointed. What if I never had that opportunity to dive? What if I died before my next attempt happened? Not being able to experience, now that’s the would be the worst feeling ever. 

So Basically…

Although I find it ironic, I believe that even though skydiving is a near death experience, it was the experience that made me feel most alive.