Matt J. Olsen

I skydove(dived?) for the first time yesterday.  Here are my thoughts:

Human beings aren’t meant for falling, at least not the way I did it.  Falling out of a plane from 15,000 feet at 120mph is not natural.  As human beings or even as mammals, we generally hate falling… and my body knows this.  My body can’t shake the experience.

As I type this, nearly 30 hours after my jump, I am still full of adrenaline and nervous jitters.  The rush I feel right now is just as strong as it was immediately after I landed.

I have an adrenaline headache and it was hard to sleep last night, despite being totally exhausted from the experience.  I woke up several times during the night with a racing heart and tingling skin; like I was in mid-jump.  My mind has been racing with replays of my fall.

It certainly doesn’t help that I’ve watched the video of my jump several times with friends and co-workers; each time I watch it I re-live the experience with a pounding heart and sweat.

But WOW what an experience!

Of course, I knew a parachute would open eventually, but that feeling of fragilly falling over Earth with nothing beneath me but the ground thousands of feet below is incredible.  Yes, it’s a little bit frightening, but it was too crazy of a moment to feel fear.  And to be one of just a handful of people free-falling through the sky over our great and beautiful planet at that moment feels very poetic.

I’m still trying to figure out what to take from it, though.  I think the reason why the adrenaline rush is still with me is because I’m finally starting to realize the jump’s significance for me.  It has something to do with the pace and scale of life.

Maybe it’s a reminder of how complacent and adjusted we become to our surroundings (and method of locomotion).  Maybe it’s a reminder that we think everything in our own lives is so huge and significant, when we’re really just passengers on a plane, specs in the sky, on a planet in the galaxy, in a galaxy in the universe.  Or maybe it’s just that falling through the sky is really, really crazy.

If it’s one of these or even if it’s all of them, what do I take from it?  How should I let it affect me?  How do I live my life now?