You’ve Gotta Jump
—Few things in life are truly risky—
“I can’t. I’m scared.”
Skyler Dunn, three years older and infinitely wiser, looked at me with a kind smile as I stared nervously toward the water nearly thirty feet below. The surface of Lake Washington had never appeared so green and ominously dark.
It was a brilliant Seattle today in the summer of my twelfth year. I’d long before completed my rite of passage by leaping from “Top,” the white steel diving platform at the end of the Laurelhurst Beach Club dock. But budding hormones now goaded me to plunge headfirst — to dive, like the teenagers.
For an hour, Skyler had been egging me on, in a supportive, sympathetic way — my first one-on-one coaching session. I was thrilled that the bigger boy had taken such an interest in my dilemma.
“You can do it,” he insisted. “Once you’ve dove, you’ll wonder why you were ever scared.”
Again and again he pleaded my own case for me, persistent but positive. After what seemed like hours of agonizing, I edged to the brink of the platform, then flung myself headlong toward the water, moments later bursting with joy to the surface, to return triumphantly to Top for another dive. As Skyler had said, now it was easy.
It’s easy for me to know this now, because I’m a lot older, and when you get older it becomes easier to understand that risk is what makes life fun, what pushes you ahead. I love the Van Halen tune:
Might as well jump. Jump! Might as well jump.
Go ahead, jump. Jump! Go ahead, jump!
My father died a couple of years ago, and your father dying is the universe telling you, “you’re next.” And when you’re next, you start to realize that — given the new big picture you’ve just been handed — few things in life are truly risky.
During my first six-year stint in Tokyo, I talked to a guy who told me how he got started on an impressive business career. It was like talking to Skyler Dunn twenty years later:
“An acquaintance’s father, an electronics company executive, asked me if I could go to the U.S. and research the battery market. ‘Sure,’ I said.”
Ever cautious, I asked if he’d had any market research experience when he made that bold reply. He snorted. “Hell, if I always had to have experience before trying something new, I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning!”
His confidence bowled me over — and I winced at my own timid thinking. Of course! Just dive, like Skyler said! It’s the thought of trying the unknown, the fear of it that holds us back. It’s not that we’re incapable. We’re all capable of doing what we can reasonably imagine ourselves doing.
What Skyler taught me at the Beach Club so many years ago, and what I keep struggling to apply, now has the clarity of age. So I say: Dive, young man! Dive, old man! Dive!
The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously.
Frederich Nietzsche
(Tim’s currently on sabbatical; this post appears courtesy of the Soul Shelter archives)
You may also enjoy:
“Recognizing the Opportunity Within”
“Eight Difficult, Outdated Ways to Excel”
3 Comments to You’ve Gotta Jump
I’m reading Richard Branson’s autobiography (Losing My Virginity) now, and it’s really useful to see how he thinks, how he approached opportunities in his business, and how he dealt with failures. It is in such sharp contrast to how most of us think (being fearful, seeing risk and obstacles rather than opportunities, being defeated by failure, rather than seeing failure as a part of success). To those of us who grew up being fearful and not taking risks, it’s a huge shift in mindset to then think in the way that successful people think. It requires us to surround ourselves with people who are successful and who see the benefits of taking risks – people like Skylar.
Well said. One of life’s greatest pleasures is being a “Skyler” to someone else, as Richard Branson is doing for millions with his books. Amazing guy -
amazing stuff thanx
You should be an expert.