“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” Neale Donald Walsch
I try hard to be humble. My experience has been that as soon as you start feeling pretty good about yourself, the world has a way of reminding you that you have a lot to learn. Here’s a good example. During a marathon that I was running, approaching mile 24 and with a personal best in site, I spied something that looked a little odd ahead of me. “Is that a wedding dress? Is that a dude in a wedding dress?! It is! Wait a minute, hold on; I am BEHIND that dude in a wedding dress.” Fortunately this has a happy ending; I beat the bride, barely. But that’s not the point. I was humbled, utterly and completely. So; I try to stay humble and look to learn from or be inspired by anyone. In this particular case, it’s my daughter Jamie.
In December of 2013, my wife and I, along with our two youngest daughters went on a vacation to South Africa. We went on safari in Botswana for about ten days, and then we went to Zambia to check out the Victoria Falls. It had been an absolute experience of a life time, but I think my wife was happy at this point, that for the most part we were done with the “dangerous” part of our vacation. Let’s not get overly dramatic here, I never REALLY felt like we were in danger, but you are out there in the wild. These are not tame animals, and we were close enough to touch tigers, leopards, elephants, hippos, and we even came across a cobra! And if the animals weren’t kind of freaking out my wife, the five seat Cessna with the broken fuel gauge that flew us through a rain storm absolutely did. The pilot was kind enough to point out to us “Don’t worry about the fuel gauge, it’s broke. I checked that we’re all good before I took off this morning.” Oh… Cool… No worries.
The hotel provided a shuttle service out to Victoria Falls and we were all pretty excited to go see one of the seven natural wonders of the world! Jamie, who was 16 at the time, was excited because she was going to bungee jump for the first time. She found a place that is on the bridge between Zambia and Zimbabwe where you can launch yourself towards the Zambezi River. Jumping off of stuff and out of stuff that’s not on fire; not my thing, you dig? But this is something she wanted to do and we try and support our kids as long as we feel like what there doing is relatively safe. Everything we read and heard is that these types of jumps are safer then driving in your car. That’s logic.
As we’re driving, the driver hears us talking about the imminent jump off the bridge and enlightens us that “Just last week, one of the cords broke when a lady jumped. She was fortunate because it only partially released her and she hit the (alligator infested) river below.” Alligator infested was my addition. So naturally my wife hears this and the jump is now, shall we say, indefinitely suspended. That’s emotion.
Needless to say, Jamie is beside herself. This is where being that “You can do anything you really want in life.” Sort of Dad comes back to kick you in the ass. I didn’t want her to jump now either, but she knew she could work me, and she did. “Dad, what do you always say? You need to try new things. Life is full of risks. Planes are safer then cars. Was that all just crap?” Ouch. Gut punch. Although my entire soul was saying “Don’t let her jump!”, my head was saying “If it were you, you’d jump. And you know it.” After about an hour, the three of us reached a compromise. Jamie wouldn’t do the bungee jump where you go straight down head first; she would do what they call the “Big Swing.”
This is a freefall of over 200 feet before the bungee pulls taught and swings you out over the river because it is tied off to another bungee about 30 meters away. You basically become a human pendulum. Don’t ask why we felt that was any safer then a straight jump, but it made us feel a little better. We pay and Jamie heads off to meet her destiny. While my wife did agree to this “Big Swing”, she still wasn’t happy. In fact at one point she looked through me and said “If anything happens to her, you’re getting me a new one!” To which I responded… there is no response to that. At least she was cracking jokes. Still, I kind of felt like a guy between Mama Bear and her cub. Pun intended! (Sticking with the safari theme here folks.)
Jamie anxiously awaits her turn, and before you know it, we can see her standing on the edge with the employees pointing and providing instruction. Suddenly, without warning, she just jumps. If there was any hesitation, I didn’t see it. There wasn’t any time to really absorb what happened because it was over that quickly. She jumped and seconds later she was swinging and looked to be having a great time. With one step off of a ledge, my 16 year old daughter schooled me on courage, decision making, living for the moment, and reminded me that in life we normally regret the things that we don’t do much more than the things that we actually do.
After we revived my wife, we continued on our vacation. Our next stop was Simonstown. My wife was thrilled. Beautiful beaches, shopping, restaurants; but wouldn’t you know it, Kathryn, Jamie, and I found out that we could swim with great white sharks there! Who could pass that up? Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on who tells the story, it wasn’t the season for that activity and we would have to wait. She finally relaxed.
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