Today’s topic for the Best of Blog Challenge 2009 is your biggest challenge of 2009. As Gwen Bell describes the topic, “Something that really made you grow this year. That made you go to your edge and then some. What made it the best challenge of the year for you?”
For me, the hands down winner for this topic was the day I conquered my fear of jumping off of something high by swinging on a rope swing over the Duck River during a kayaking trip with friends. Actually, I covered this exact topic back in July, shortly after the experience.
You see, I have always had a fear of heights and a fear of jumping off of even relatively low places. I can’t place where these fears came from, but they do exist and have caused me, at various times, to avoid certain activities or going certain places. For instance, I was in a tour of the World Trade Center many years back and the observation deck in the one tower had movie theather style seats in rows right up against the glass where you could just sit and look out over Manhatten in all directions. Now, I could look out the windows, but I couldn’t get close to the seats. Oddly, however, I can sit next to the window on an airplane and look down at the ground as we fly along at 35,000 feet with no problems.
Anyhow, back to the rope swing. The tree on which the rope was affixed was laying over on it’s side. The main trunk of the tree was over a foot thick out over the river and two feet thick near the bank where the tree had been standing in the past. One of it’s main branches was sticking up at a high angle, thus making a prefect spot from which to attach the rope. And, as luck would have it, the depth of the river where the tree lay jutting over the river was such that we could swim and not touch bottom if we were treading water. Plenty deep enough to land in without worry of striking the bottom, etc.
Now, on this trip, there were six of us. It was a warm summer day and we had stopped to have lunch and enjoy the cool water. Now, as we continued on the “float” we came upon this tree and the rather thick rope which had been left attached to the tree for anyone who happened to pass. Keith, our fearless leader, decided he was going to try the swing. And, sure enough, he sailed out over the river before letting go of the rope and basically cannon-balling into the river. This prompted my friends Joe and David to attempt the swing along with one of the two ladies on the trip – Julia. They all had fine form and landed with grand splashes in the river.
It looked like a LOT of fun so I decided that I must try this, even as the fear of leaping off and falling all started to knot up my stomach. But, having just recent read a blog post about facing your fears, which I mentioned yesterday in fact, I knew I HAD to try and face these fears and try the swing anyway. As Leo said, “Feel the fear, and do it anyway!” And so, I clambered out of my kayak and onto the fallen tree trunk and made my way out to where the rope hung down to the water. And, standing there, holding the rope and fighting an internal battle of wills (one voice screaming “DON’T DO IT” and the other voice screaming “JUST DO IT”) and with plenty of “encouragement” from my friends, I finally took the plunge and leapt off the tree trunk. It wasn’t graceful or pretty. It was, more or less, just a semi controlled fall into the river, but for me a triumph! I don’t know if you can see this, since it is posted on Facebook, but my friend Julia even captured my triumph on video. I even tried it a second time and managed to improve my form ever so slightly. All in all, it was an exhilarating experience and something I highly recommend to anyone. When confronted with a rope swing, the best course of action is to jump.
What I figured out, was that leaps of faith are often necessary if you ever want to grow as a person. Sure, you can get hurt, but staying safe will always ensure that you won’t achieve any real growth. Its only when we step out on a limb and test how far we can go that we discover that we can go a LOT farther than we ever thought possible.
