"May you live every day of your life"

On Friday, October 10, around 1:00 am, I received an IM from one of my friends asking if I would be interested in going skydiving in Vermont. He was planning on leaving around 9:00 that night and skydiving early the next day. Having little time to make a decision, I agreed to go on the trip. It is important to note here that skydiving is something I always had on my "Do Before I Die" list, but I never thought I would gather up enough courage to actually do it. The entire car ride up, I debated whether or not I was going to jump. Long story short, I ended up jumping out of the plane at an altitude of 11,000 feet.

By jumping, i confirmed and acted on the belief:

We do not have total control over when we die. Not taking chances, and limiting ourselves because we think it keeps us safer from death gives us a false sense that we can determine our time.

I believe in God, and I believe that God determines when we will die. If I decided not to go skydiving because of a fear of death then I am not really living my life according to this belief. We do not always realize it, but we face death every second of every day. Accepting that God determines our death leads us to also accept the idea that things like skydiving are no more dangerous than driving down a street or walking into a building. Skydiving, and other "risky" adventures, will always seem more dangerous because the fear of death is brought to the top of our conscious.

When I was discussing this belief with one of my friends, he decided to use it in relation to one of my biggest fears; thunderstorms. He asked, "So now you can go and play on a playground with me during the next thunderstorm, right?" Going by the belief I stated above, it would make sense for me to do it and it took me awhile to figure out why I felt this situation is different. I guess we also need to consider the motivations for our actions. If your purpose is to chance death, or tempt fate, then the chance is not worth taking. If I were to play on a playground just to say I survived then I am mocking God and not trusting Him. I went skydiving to live and to put my fate completely in God's hands.

I cannot explain to you the feeling I got after jumping (and im not talking about the motion sickness!). Hours after the jump, I had this new sense of and appreciation for life. I promised myself to never again let a fear of death get in my way of living. So to everyone, I quote Jonathan Swift, and say, "May you live everyday of your life".