I’ve jumped out of a plane seven times.
Six solo jumps.
One tandem.
And every single time, there was a moment standing at the open door where my brain asked the same completely reasonable question:
Why are we doing this voluntarily?
The wind is deafening.
The ground looks impossibly far away.
Every survival instinct inside your body suddenly becomes very awake.
Then you jump.
And for a few seconds, something strange happens.
Fear transforms into presence.
There’s no room to think about emails, bills, awkward conversations from three years ago, or whether you said the wrong thing in a text message. Your mind becomes completely anchored to the moment because it has no other choice.
You are simply falling through the sky.
And oddly enough… it reminds me of bubbles.
At first that sounds ridiculous. Skydiving feels intense and extreme. Bubbles feel soft and playful. But emotionally, they share something important:
Both force surrender.
You cannot fully control a bubble once it leaves the wand. The wind carries it. The air shapes it. The sunlight changes it. Its beauty exists partly because it’s temporary and unpredictable.
Free falling feels similar.
The moment you leave the plane, control becomes an illusion. Fighting the experience only creates panic. The only thing you can really do is breathe, trust your training, and let yourself move with the air instead of against it.
That realization changed something in me.
Because I think many of us spend our lives desperately trying to eliminate uncertainty. We try to predict outcomes, manage perceptions, control emotions, avoid discomfort, and protect ourselves from vulnerability.
But life itself is basically controlled free fall.
None of us truly know what’s coming next.
Love can appear unexpectedly.
Loss can arrive suddenly.
Careers change.
People leave.
Bodies age.
Plans collapse.
New chapters begin before we feel ready.
And yet somehow, humans keep moving forward anyway.
That’s courage.
Not certainty.
Not fearlessness.
Just movement despite uncertainty.
Skydiving taught me something else too:
the anticipation is often worse than the experience itself.
Standing at the plane door was terrifying.
But once I jumped, the fear dissolved into awe.
I think this happens emotionally too.
We fear vulnerability more than vulnerability itself.
We fear change more than the actual transition.
We fear failure more than surviving it.
Sometimes the scariest part of life is simply the moment before letting go.
And maybe that’s another reason bubbles resonate with me so deeply.
Bubbles don’t resist their nature.
They drift.
They wobble.
They reflect light beautifully for a brief moment.
And eventually, they disappear.
Not tragically.
Just naturally.
Free falling taught me that maybe life feels lighter when we stop trying to grip everything so tightly.
Maybe peace isn’t found in controlling every outcome.
Maybe peace is learning how to float gracefully through uncertainty while we’re here.
And honestly?
Few things make you feel more alive than stepping into open air and realizing:
You were never really in control to begin with.