By Traci Rork
Miss Informed
(5.14.09)
So last week on my boyfriend’s birthday, we did something crazy. Something that I’ve always wanted to experience and an event that I will cherish for the rest of my life ~ we went skydiving!
It was beautiful, exhilarating, epic and spiritual, and something that I am proud I had the nerve to accomplish. But if I hadn’t been advised to keep this impending adventure a secret from my mother and my logical friends, the outcome could have been much different as they would have talked me out of it immediately. And I must say that delivering the news after it had already successfully happened was much more rewarding for all parties involved.
Now a couple days after throwing myself out of a plane, the parents arrived in Key West to celebrate my mother’s birthday, which was closely followed by Mother‘s Day. They made the trek from Kansas to the tropics to visit their responsible daughter on her faraway island. Everyone generally curses the place I call home because no one ever makes it here for a visit unscathed. They always seem to have setbacks due to canceled flights or lost luggage, and this trip was no exception. So, after a strenuous day of mechanical problems and rerouted planes, they finally plopped down on the couch in my air-conditioned apartment and had a moment to relax. That is until I informed them that I had recently jumped out of a plane at 10,000 feet and wanted to show them the DVD. Oh joy.
Needless to say, mom was less than thrilled to watch a video of her little girl dangling out of a tiny plane before leaping into the sky, high above the clouds with her life in the hands of a South African named Brutus strapped to her back. My dad on the other hand, was more supportive of yet another one of my crazy adventures, which has always been the case when compared to my rational mother.
As she paced around with her blood pressure rising, I had to remind her that the deed is done and I’m still alive ~ happy birthday! She’s been through a lot over the years so she is sort of getting used to my brother and I dropping bombs like these out of the blue. (You know, kind of like the ‘Hey, I’m selling my car and moving to Key West” incident).
She barely even rolled her eyes after my brother Colin graduated college with a psychology degree and said he was either going to become Britney Spears’ bodyguard or enroll in stunt man school in Australia (which of course dad thought were both reasonable career paths). To further comfort mom, Colin said that nothing we do now is going to matter anyway because we’re all going to die in 2012. (Perhaps he has a future in motivational speaking).
Anyhow, this apocalyptic theory was discussed in one of his philosophy classes and ever since he mentioned it, I’ve heard the subject pondered everywhere from dinner parties to the History Channel. According to the doomsday predictions of many, the Mayan calendar stops on what will be Dec. 23, 2012, and the world as we know it will come to an end. Lovely. I bet the skydiving business will be booming that year!
But all joking aside, scientists and scholars say there may be a shift in the galactic alignment, the earth could be annihilated by another planet, and we only have three more years to pack in a lifetime of living . . . Or this could be crazy speculation similar to that surrounding the Y2K panic and life will indeed go on.
Regardless, it’s worth contemplating. Think about it, how different would your Monday be if you knew you were going to die on Tuesday? I doubt laundry would be at the top of the “to do” list as you re-evaluate your priorities. If you know your time is limited, you make the most of your experiences, your relationships, your life in general, and you don’t sweat the small stuff.
It reminds me of a country song about skydiving, Rocky Mountain climbing and riding a bull named Fu Man Chu. Tim McGraw sings about a dying man who hopes that everyone gets the chance to live like they were dying. It’s about seizing the day, treating each moment as a gift and cherishing those you love. So I jumped out of a plane two miles above the ground and floated above the clouds with the man I love (no, not Brutus). And I suggest that everyone else should also throw a little adventure into the mundane whenever the chance presents itself.
So just in case the Mayan’s are on to something, I advise that everyone to go left on occasion instead of going right, that you accept invitations you would rather deny and to just shake life up in general for your own sake. As the saying goes, “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up to much space,“
But please don’t go off the deep end, become selfish and forgo all other responsibilities while you go mountain climbing or bull riding. Just don’t put your wants or desires on a back burner either…that’s all.
It’s our responsibility to carve out the lives we want for ourselves. We hand pick activities to fill the moments that become our existence . . . and we can be as creative or as boring as we want. So what have you done lately that you’ve been dying to do (no pun intended)? And what in the world should we plan for Dec. 22, 2012? I‘m thinking about throwing a “live like you are dyin’ but hopefully the Mayans are lyin,” party!? Let me know if you’re interested!
To further inform Miss Informed, e-mail trork@keysnews.com.
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