In The Hands Of The Gods

“YOLO, YOLO, YOLO!” they kept saying.“Do it Dad. YOLO!”

“Stop shouting that! It’s a nonsense word, like Woke! What does it even mean?”

They rolled their eyes, as they do whenever they’re asked a question. “You. Only. Live. Once!”

“You only live once? That’s a really good reason not to throw myself out of a plane.”

My wife and friends had assumed my general miserable demeanour to be a sign of an impending mid-life crisis and suggested that, to fix it, I throw myself out of a plane. “Parachute optional,” my wife added, jokingly. Probably.

“It’ll be good for you,” she said later that evening. “Do something to make you feel alive.”

“I feel alive every morning I get up and go to work.”

“That’s not alive,” she said, “that’s just a life!”

So, here I am, in the hands of the gods, having just thrown myself out of a plane. Parachute attached,

The one thing that isn’t obvious when you see other people doing this is the noise. The sound of air rushing past you as you fall. This is what a car must feel like doing 80. Even with the fancy glasses and the helmet it’s so damn loud.

The helmet! I had to laugh. The illusion of safety. “So,” I said to the kid strapping me in, “if my parachute fails and I hit the ground at 100 miles an hour, I should try to land on my head?”

He didn’t get the joke. If there was one.

Now I’m flying through the air; if flying is the right word. Technically I’m just falling. It’s kinda nice though, once you get past being terrified beyond the ability for rational thought. The view from up here is stunning. I can see why birds like it. Nothing but blue sky above me, and miles of land stretching out below me in all directions.

It’s funny how the ground is so unthreatening when you’re standing on it. From up here though, it’s both terrifyingly far away and terrifyingly close at the same time.

I shake away these thoughts and accept that, for the next few minutes of my life, it’s just me and gravity. I stretch my hands out ahead of me like Superman. I smile. Thirty years fall away from me. I am a kid again, full of the joys of life. Am I happy? Is this what being ‘alive’ feels like? I flip over onto my back and float on the air. I can see the plane I jumped out of. I’m in the air…with a plane. What a wondrous experience this has become. I flip back over and go into a somersault before flattening back out and spinning through the air arms and legs akimbo. Every adult worry seems to have been blasted away by the rushing air. The weight that constantly presses down upon me on land has no power up here. I share a laugh of pure joy with the universe at large. It will live forever, spreading out in every direction, yet only ever be heard in my soul.

I am free!

I am alive!

The special watch they gave me sounds its alarm. Parachute time. I remember the drill and pull the cords. Even against the noise of the wind, I hear it flap and unfurl. My whole body jerks as my brakes are applied and my descent begins to slow.

I have survived.

Yet, I no longer feel alive.

I can see the car park as I drift downwards. Where my car sits. The car that I’m still paying off. I can see my family waiting in the landing field. They are waving a sign that I can’t read. It’s not that I don’t love my family; I do, but they’re a reminder of the world down there. A world where I am ‘a life’, not where I’m ‘alive’.

There’s a big target in the landing field. I can’t resist it; no man could. We love something to aim at, even with the most mundane tasks, but even scoring a bullseye, I feel no joy. Landing, touching back down to earth, brings forth tears. I see my family rushing over. I manage a smile as I unbuckle myself from the parachute. My family hug me and pester me with excitable questions. My wife wipes tears from my face. She assumes they are tears of joy. I don’t correct her.

YOLO