Why I Jump Out of Airplanes… I mean, meditate.
Sadly, it’s not to feel better.
When I was 19 I was pushed out of an airplane.
Seriously.
It was absolutely fucking terrifying.
When it happened, I was perched in the open door of a perfectly good airplane. The instruction was “Stand, in the door!”
Even typing that I feel a little dizzy.
I was a cadet at the Air Force Academy. This was my first summer of college. We were wearing our green flight suits. Fully harnessed. Helmets. Jump boots. The inside of the plane was bare metal, except for two benches facing each other.
Sitting there, waiting my turn, while the plane slowly completed it’s rotational pattern, no one talked. I literally couldn’t use my mouth. I just sat there watching as my friends, one by one, got sucked out of the open door.
And then it was my turn. My instructor looked at me. And just like we had rehearsed, he pointed at me and shouted, “You!”
And then pointing to the very edge of the door, the ledge of the last thing to hold on to before four thousand feet of wide, open space. “Stand, in the door!”
I crawled. Slowly. Keeping my face as low as I could to the metal floor. I put my right knee right up on the edge of the…
