As skydivers, we get accused of being “crazy” more than the average bear. It doesn’t ruffle our feathers too much to hear the “C” word, honestly, because we understand how loony our obsession might appear to an onlooker. When you look at skydiving from down on the ground, it’s pretty easy to get the wrong idea about how out-of-one’s-mind one would have to be to do that six times on a slow day.
If you call skydiving “crazy,” you’d do well to ponder the fact that the term “crazy” is totally relative. Skydiving is the subtype of crazy that not only isn’t bad, it’s totally necessary to be in a healthy, balanced life. To get a better idea of what we mean by that, here are the facts, dear reader:
What we call “insanity” is not always a bad thing.
Sure, there are kinds of insanity that should send every self-preserving soul running for the door. However, a certain kind of insanity is not something to be run from, it’s something to be wholeheartedly embraced. What’s that kind of insanity, you ask? Well, it’s the kind that’s expressed when you take something on that’s totally out of your comfort zone, just because it feels good to explore out there–or just because it feels right. Foregoing the established route for the one that you know, in your heart, is the right one probably looks “crazy” to the people who are still marching along behind you in a blind line, right?
Chew on this: the act of making a skydive, the act of telling someone you love them for the first time, the act of moving to a new town to start a new life, the act of quitting your high-profile job to sell your legendary superfood brownies at the farmer’s market…these things are not too dissimilar. Skydiving is the good kind of crazy, and it’s a training field for the self-realization that underlies a well-lived existence.
Sure, you can die skydiving–but you could die crossing the street, too, and crossing the street doesn’t help you work on that superhero status.
Guess what? There is a chance that you’ll die on a skydive. That’s one of the risks! That fact, however, does not make skydiving “crazy.” In reality, the act of making a skydive is statistically safer than your to-and-fro work commute.
When you really get into it, it’s the ratio of risk to reward that we really need to look at when we square up to the chance of dying on a skydive. Real talk: Our day-to-day actions–the dietary choices we make, smoking, the slow ramp-up of habitual drinking, acute, constant stress–are much surer to kill us than freefall. (And, by the way, all of these risk factors tend to taper way off when you take up a physical activity that you love: like, for instance, sport skydiving.)
So: Is skydiving crazy? To find out, ask a few more questions first. Is it crazy to have the time of your life? Is it crazy to decide to take a mindful, calm, calculated risk? Is it crazy to do something that makes you deliriously happy and feel enormously powerful? Is it crazy to challenge yourself? Is it crazy to give your comfort zone a healthy shove? Maybe it is. But if it is, we are crazy, and we hope you are, too.
We encourage you to get a little crazy with us! Book your skydive today at the Chattanooga Skydiving Company and see how super-duper-good it can be to introduce a little proactive insanity into your life.
