How Scary is Skydiving?

Is skydiving scary? Yes. Yes, it is.

A lot of people report that they aren’t afraid when they make that first skydive, but y’know what? If you’re not scared to jump out the open door of a plane that’s different than any other plane you’ve ever ridden in, into thin air, from ten thousand feet over the ground, under equipment you don’t really understand yet, strapped to a person you don’t personally know, then you are a very, very unique person indeed. We might even be a little worried about you because actually not being scared in that situation means that something may have wiggled loose in your innate mechanics of self-preservation.*

Just how scary is skydiving? Well, it’s scary in lots of ways. Here are the ways skydiving is scary–but you’d better prepare to be surprised…because the fact that skydiving is scary is the reason it’s so powerful.

Skydiving is scary-revelatory.

Think you can’t skydive because you’re scared of heights? You have another thing coming. When it comes to being scared of heights, skydiving doesn’t even ping. Your body can’t be afraid of heights when your eyes and brain are working from a visual that simply looks like a flat map. The kind of scared you’re likely to feel has nothing to do with heights; it has to do with the unknown. Once you conquer that, you have a tool you can use to boost your confidence for the whole rest of your life.

Skydiving is scary-interesting.

That fear of the unknown you conquer on your first tandem skydive? It’s a door. And what’s behind that door is riveting. It’s impossible to describe to someone what to expect when you go skydiving for the first time. Cases in point: The pressure under your body feels like comforting support. The wind through the lines of the parachute sounds like the gentle whistling that a parent does to calm a baby. Even the taste of the air is different at altitude. You could make thousands and thousands of jumps and still be surprised by what you discover up there. Many of us quite literally have.

Skydiving is scary-addictive.

And that leads us to our final point: That skydiving is something that just might get its hooks into you. Lots of people think that a skydive is a one-time thing–a stunt, basically, that they’ll pull off and strut right on to the next thing. But for many of us, that first tandem skydive was the moment that threw open the gates to a whole new way of livin’; to lifelong friendships, forged in freefall and christened in beer; to worldwide travels that hop to and fro among the many skies this world has to offer.

So: If you tempted to skip skydiving because you’re worried you might lose your life, keep in mind that you might just discover a whole new one. If you’re scared of anything, be scared of the status quo! Jump and see how beautiful a new perspective can be.

*…and when someone says they’re not afraid, it’s usually pretty obvious that they are. We let ‘em be. Ain’t no thing. Everyone approaches this in their own way.