A leap of faith: Overcoming fearful thoughts and seeing deeper

In November 2018 I did a bungee jump. I’d always dismissed the idea of doing one as looking terribly painful as your joints pull apart at the end of an elastic band, with it’s potential to snap itself, if not you (interesting attitude, given I’ve whitewater rafted, surfed and skydived with abandon). So, curious as to why I’d made up a story to avoid this for so long, I found myself in South Africa at the world’s tallest bridge jump and I knew I had no choice. I wanted to get over the thinking that made a bungee jump seem impossible to me — and being a thrill seeker I couldn’t pass up the unexpected opportunity in front of me.

So that’s how I found myself standing on the edge of Bloukrans Bridge, having spent an hour in varying states of anxiety watching others leap off — (I moved between perfectly calm and excited for others, to dancing to the party music played while you wait, to terrified, seamlessly).

Fortunately the technicians push you off, it’s so counter-intuitive to launch yourself into an abyss, the result of which logic tells you is certain death. As I felt myself fly out I felt pure fear — with it’s capacity to paralyse and consume. As I gently boinged up and down on the end of the line I was in awe.

Afterwards I expressed this as life changing because of the experience of thinking I was going to die and not doing — one way to see clearly how our thinking creates our experience. I was certain if I could jump off again as soon as I’d got back on the bridge it would have been total fun!

Then I looked again to see what’s behind that. I saw that what I experienced was not a fear of death, but a misunderstanding of life. In the moments before the line saved my fall, I surrendered, I trusted, I knew I would be OK — I felt so completely held by life that whatever the outcome it didn’t matter. I knew what it meant to be alive.

I am thrilled by the fun and in awe of the lesson of this leap of faith.