The Leap Of Faith

The idea gets planted in your head. You watch some videos on the internet. You feel excited and afraid. To lower the anxiety, you watch more videos with palaces having a higher jump. You kid yourself into believing that since places with a higher jump exist, this will be like swatting a fly. But you forget that jumping from a height of 83m and 266m will have the same effect if things go wrong. You will die.

You watch some more videos. But the 2D videos characteristically lack the “depth”. They play Schadenfreude with you. They take you into the comfort of excitement.

Finally, you get to the bridge. The jumping platform is still some distance away. You tell yourself that you will live. After all more than 2000 people have taken the leap of faith from here. No one has ever died. But a tiny-tweeny voice inside your head tells you that there is always the first time and there is always the last time.

You get to the jumping platform. You think that you are mentally prepared. Since the time you watched the videos- that is 5 days back- 70% of the time has been spent preparing for this moment. You think that you will do it. You get to the edge of the platform.

Suddenly something snaps. You realise that for all your preparation for the moment you will do it, nothing can prepare you for that inevitable moment when you don’t want to do it. When you just want to take off that harness and run away from the platform. For once, you are ready for the life to call you a loser.

You then try to fix your eyes to a different spot. The one level with them. But your eyes don’t want to cheat your mind. You keep looking down.

The harness tying you to the platform is taken off. You can’t see the rope. It is at the back. You feel that you are all alone. The trainer talks to you, trying to soothe you down. You are hearing every word he is saying, but you aren’t listening. Before you realise, the excitement is gone. You are sacred now. Shit scared.

You drag yourself to the platform. You are looking down. The trainer asks you to look up. But as I said before, you aren’t listening. A voice comes. A voice comes. You don’t really know if it is the trainer shouting or somewhere someone is sitting inside you just making fun of you, laughing at you, waiting for you to turn into a damp squib as the trainer goes 3…..2…..1…..

Nevertheless, you jump.

And as if to let you capture it all forever, the time stops. And as if to let you make love to that very moment, the world takes a step back. It ceases to exist. And you live.  

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