“You don’t need a parachute to go skydiving…
You need a parachute to go skydiving twice.”
This joke is an archetypal “dad joke,” and one of my dad’s personal favorites. I never appreciated it very much, but it has come to mind often the past few weeks--starting college seems in many ways strikingly similar to the comical yet terrifying premise of this joke: skydiving without a parachute.
With no other context, I suppose that portrays the beginning of college as a primarily, if not fully negative experience, so let me elaborate. The past two weeks have housed some of the most incredible experiences I have had in life so far. I have fallen in love with my classes, made a home in my residential community, and met some of the smartest, funniest, most unique and incredible people I have yet had the pleasure of knowing. All the things I previously imagined would take a lifetime to accomplish have been drawn nearly to completion in just a couple of weeks.
I am writing this post sitting in the hallway just outside my room, and as I type I can hear over the clicking of keys the joyful conversation of a healthy community between people who have known each other, in some cases, as little as a few days. Already all of us (speaking of the new freshmen in this community) have been intentionally sought out by leaders in our halls and classes and made to feel welcome and important.
This has all happened so fast. Every experience I have had in these weeks has flown by far faster than I could have imagined heretofore. The sensation is (in my imagination) not unlike the sensation of falling at hundreds of miles per hour through seemingly endless sky, and for awhile I found myself searching frantically for a safe place to land, but I have learned a lesson through this freefall.
The experience happening in my hall is just one of countless examples I have seen in my short time here at college that has given me hope that it is exactly where I want to be, and the interesting thing is that this place I find myself in is not solid ground. It is not a safe place to land. Instead, everyone around me is free-falling with me. Many jumped first and many will jump after. Of all of us who have just jumped, we each fall at a different speed. But we are all falling.
At first I found this notion terrifying. Certainly I would feel far more comfortable not falling at all. But I have now realized that to avoid falling, I would have had to avoid jumping altogether, and if I never jumped, I would never find a safe place to land. I am no longer certain any of us ever really land while we live in this world. To land in this life is to cease to learn, and to cease to learn is to cease to truly live.
If life is truly a free-fall we only get to do once, then let me fall with all those around me, and let me do so fearlessly and enjoying the view.
"The steps of a man are established by the LORD, when he delights in his way; though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the LORD upholds his hand." -Psalm 37:23-24
