“Live more. Fear less.”

All of us (well, maybe not all of us) have irrational fears.  Someone in our family is terribly afraid of birds and other winged creatures!  I am absolutely terrified of heights.  I'm not sure where this fear started exactly.  I remember a time growing up when I was working on a roof in the Appalachian region as part of a youth group excursion trip (an early version of "Habitat for Humanity").  I fell off the roof, but safely landed on the very soft ground (mud actually).  As they say, my pride was hurt more than my body.  Perhaps that is when I became afraid of heights.  I just don't know.

Well, the English playwright Shakespeare wrote, "Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once."  I don't know if I would quite put it like that, so I like the quote by Eleanor Roosevelt better.  She once reportedly said, "Do one thing every day that scares you."

My son and I just got back home from a once-in-a-lifetime trip to New Zealand.  His work paid for most of the trip, and I was lucky enough to be able to go with him!  The country is absolutely amazing in its beauty!  While in Queenstown, he convinced me to go Bungy jumping with A.J. Hackett Bungy New Zealand!  Apparently, Queenstown is the home of bungy jumping, so I guess this made sense.

Bungy jumping, or rather the idea of jumping from a height while tethered to a rope first originated on the island of Vanuatu, where young men ritually jumped from tall wooden platforms with vines tied to their ankles as a test of their courage.  Apparently, this was the inspiration for the modern concept of bungy jumping developed by entrepreneur A.J. Hackett.  The first commercial site for bungy jumping was the Kawarau River Gorge suspension bridge in Queenstown.  Here's a picture of the bungy platform on the bridge (taken with my cell phone right before we made the jump):

It's only (only) 43 meters high!  The A.J. Hackett Nevis Highwire Platform, the third highest bungy jumping platform in the word, is three times as high at 134 meters!  Anyway, we decided to go ahead and make the jump from the Kawarau River Bridge (I will say it was due to historical reasons, but I'd be lying).  The worst part was shuffling out to the edge of the platform, but I have to admit that the jump was a lot of fun.

One of my daughters asked me if I would ever do this again.  I told her that I absolutely would - it was an incredible thrill.  Once I got past the fear of being on the edge of a platform so high above the river, the rest was an amazing experience.  And if I had let my fears rule the day, I would have missed out on an incredible thrill of bungy jumping.

Will I make this a hobby?  Nope.  But I was proud that I conquered my fear.  Like Eleanor Roosevelt said, ""Do one thing every day that scares you."  Not only will you expand your repertoire of experiences, learn something new, or actually have fun, but you may also find that your fears were unwarranted.  The marketing slogan for A.J. Hackett's company states it best - "Live more.  Fear less."