Brushing off my ol' parachute

Photo credit:  noweevil.com via Google images

This week I was presented with a big opportunity to do something I would really love to do, but am afraid to try.  I am afraid to commit myself to this project not because of time constraints or any of those things, but simply because I am afraid of failing.  All week I have ruminated over if I could be good enough, successful enough, and wondered how I would even start.  It was today that I remembered I wasn't always this person.  There was a time when I had no fear, just desire, faith, and a willingness to fail.

Once as a child I vividly remember climbing a tree in our front yard with a "parachute" (A modified table cloth in a back pack...) attached to my back, intent on jumping out of the tree just to see if my homemade "parachute" would catch me.  I studied that tree, the distance to the ground and just jumped.  There was no hesitation, no fear, only the wind underneath my body as I plummeted to the ground, arms out-stretched.

I learned a few things that day:

      1) The ground approaches quickly.
      2) Never jump out of a tree with shorts on.
      3) Unzip your backpack before you jump.  Your parachute will not work if it can't be released!  ( I'm sure this is the primary reason the experiment went wrong....)

Today when I looked back at the tree jumping episode I originally thought it was one of my more stupid childhood stunts.  It took me a moment to realize that the person I was back then and the person that I am now are two different people and where I do recognize that in some ways this is a good thing, in some ways it's also a bad thing.  I want to be the person that has no fear.  That lives in the now, and is not afraid to "jump".  I want to show failure my backside, make the jump, and know that I will hit solid ground if purely by desire alone.

So, it's time for me to find my "parachute", dust it off, strap it to my back and jump.  Success isn't measured by what you achieve.  It's measured by how many times you try and what you learn along the way.  I learned this when I was 8 years old.