Hello, hello you crusty pizzas!
Today I’m going to share what I learned while shitting myself from my fear of heights. Let’s jump right in! Get it? “Jump”? Never mind…
When in Sardinia, I had one of the best days of my life, but that’s a story for another day! I suddenly found myself in Cala Goloritze, of the world’s best remote beaches, and let me tell you it’s absolutely gorgeous. As gorgeous as Magic Mike’s Channing Tatum, yeah, you know what I’m talking about. Crystal clear water, stunning cliffs and breathtaking nature, the whole package!
I mean, it doesn’t get better than this! Days earlier, we had researched this place and discovered it was a holy site for cliff jumping. We had seen a video of Ryan Shirley (an excellent travel guide, by the way, check him out on youtube), on this cute little arch, so that was one of the reasons we wanted to go there, besides the obvious ones, I mean just look at the picture above! When we got there, it dawned upon us. We looked at each other, it could not be! Obviously, we were in the wrong place. There was no way that was it! It looked so small in the video and pictures. We looked up and saw this freaking colossal, dazzling arch made of light-toned rock!
You can look at the tiny, little red floating thing for scale on the right bottom of the picture. We were absolutely shocked, and a bit disappointed to be honest. We thought that we had come a long way for nothing. Until something happened. From our boat, in the distance, we see a figure approaching the arch. We thought it was nothing. Then, he got to the edge, and really looked like he was going to jump. We looked at each other, and said: Let’s go! And so we did. We left our boat anchored, and started swimming towards our demise. As we climbed, we noticed the guy we saw was having very serious second thoughts, and if he couldn´t do it, neither could we. We strike up the typical conversation about how tall it is, and if we’re going to die or not. After 10 minutes of hesitation, this absolute mad lad looks at me and says “Well, see you soon”, and freaking drops down. I watch over the edge and there he is falling until he makes a big splash! My friend Tiago, clearly got inspired by this flying hawk of a man and also jumped. There I am, standing on this beautiful piece of rock, paralyzed. In front of me, a bunch of boats full of tourists, filming, waiting for my fall. Below me, Tiago and the bald Italian guy cheering me on. Keep in mind that at the moment of that jump, I had climbed vertical, steep, rock walls without a rope, I had skydived, I had cliff jumped before, well nothing helped. I get closer to the edge. Everything in my body is shaking, yes, everything. Still, mentally I’m paralyzed. All my past experiences, don’t seem to help at all. My sole focus is on the fall, my mind is completely empty. And that’s when it strikes me, there’s only one thing I must do. I just have to let go. I don’t even need to jump, I simply need to fall, gravity will do the rest. I just need to stop holding on so hard and trust that everything will be fine! I look at the horizon, every single tourist is shouting: “Jump!”. I tell Tiago to count up to 3.
One
Two
And then I fall. On the way down, there’s nothing going on, you’re simply living, and then when you hit the water, you feel a sense of security. You feel that the world is there for you, it’s there to catch you.
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What I learned
Letting go is the simplest but most important lesson I take away from cliff jumping. All the anticipation, all your thoughts, all your worked-out plans, at that moment they are completely worthless. They mean nothing. I learned that I should stop having all these expectations about myself, and about others. About my behaviour and the behaviour of others. Sometimes you should go with the flow, if it works out, it does, if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t. No need to be anxious or worried over something you can control, it’s a simple thing, but really hard to practice! Also, fear is a fucking pain in the ass. If you really think about it, you’re not really afraid of the activity itself, you’re afraid of the consequences. You’re not afraid of climbing, you’re afraid of falling, you’re not afraid of that job interview, you’re afraid of rejection, you’re not afraid of that difficult conversation, you’re afraid of the other person’s reaction.
“Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.”
Don’t let fear have a grip on you, of course always prepare and plan to expect the best outcome possible, but when the moment arrives just stop holding on. Because life is not going the way you think it is, and you can be perpetually angry about that, or In Bear Grylls‘s words: Improvise, Adapt and Overcome. Well, now your thinking, Federico you bastard, this jump has really changed your life! That’s the beauty of it, while I learned many of these lessons, I still need to apply them, there’s a difference between knowing and doing. Days later we went to the most famous cliff jumping spot in Croatia, there you can see these really fat dudes pulling backflips while flying, it’s truly an exciting spectacle. I got to the edge to jump. Do you want to guess what happened? I froze, again, and then I re-learned all these lessons again. I looked to the horizon, and what happened next, I’ll leave to the imagination.
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