Jumping Into Life

When I was a kid I used to go with my best friends family to their summer house in Pennsylvania. On one of those trips we hiked up a waterfall. It wasn’t a super big waterfall but it did go up quite high. At the top there was a rock/some land that jetted out with a tree which allowed me to kind of be standing over the waterfall. As I held onto that tree I peered over and watched the water rush all the way down and had a strong desire to jump and be a part of that free fall. I remember mentioning it to my friend and her getting nervous I would actually jump. I explained that I didn’t want to actually jump and kill myself, but there was just something amazing about imagining myself free falling with that water. Fast forward to the present. Last week I was walking along the ocean one morning. I stopped to look at the waves crashing into the rocks and immediately thought to myself, “I want to just jump into that wildness and be taken over and just be done with this life.” It was a sad thought, filled with despair and not entirely uncommon for me. But this time it actually shocked me as I hadn’t realized I had been feeling depressed. After all I was on vacation and relaxing and enjoying the freedom from day to day life. I felt into this desire to jump in and “end” my life a bit more. I wanted to know where this was coming from at that point in time. I sat down near the water, tears dripping down my face and watched the raw power of the ocean. I suddenly wondered... What if it’s not that I want to jump in to die but that what I am truly wanting is to jump in to finally live? What if all these years I have been misinterpreting my suicidal thoughts as wanting to end my life when they were really a part of me pleading with me to really allow myself to live? What if that voice is really asking me to jump into the wildness? To truly feel the good and the bad. To stop trying to control my environment and let myself truly be a part of the wild, powerful forces of life? What if what I really want is to live and what I’ve been doing until now is not truly living but just existing? Of course my mind would interpret this as wanting to die. It is a death of sorts. A death of the being I have created to navigate this world. But imagine what life could truly be like if I let go of all the preconceived ideas of who I am and what I should do and just let life have its way with me. Scary thought isn’t it? To not be in control. The more I think about this lately the stronger my desire to finally allow myself to fully jump into life becomes. I can see how my lifelong feelings of being trapped were of my own making, not imposed on me by others. That my yearning to be free is as simple as wanting to be me. Years ago I had a good friend move across the country. When he left I gave him a gift. A Mark Twain quote I had hand written for him and framed. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” It’s time for me to have this quote framed for myself. But I’m ready to go further than throwing off the bowlines. No boats for me. I’m going to jump straight into the ocean of life and learn what it truly feels like to be alive.