I stood on the platform and took in the view.
To my left and right were palm trees and buildings, illuminated in the steamy morning sunshine.
Below me — some 33 feet below me — was a swimming pool.
I was at the top of the 10 meter dive tower at the University of Miami. And at this moment, I was wondering what I had got myself into.
Wow, I thought. I can see all of campus from here.
Not exactly a reassuring thought, as I prepared to plunge into the water three stories below.
My mind started to race.
What if I overshoot the pool and land on the concrete? What if I injure myself hitting the water? What in the world am I doing?
I thought back to the only time I had seen someone up on the platform who wasn’t on the diving team. It was a girl who won a belly-flop contest the lifeguards set up. She ran off the edge, screaming in terror until she was underwater.
We all laughed insensitively, because that’s what college kids do. But now, the joke was on me.
I looked back at the narrow ladders I had climbed to get here. They looked even more treacherous to descend.
There was only one realistic way down. I knew it. But I wasn’t ready.
I felt a pit in my stomach. The sweat from my anxiety mixed with that from the humidity.
I closed my eyes and opened them. Then I ran off the edge.
The first thing I remember seeing was the water through my peripheral vision.
No, not the peripheral vision that helps us see what’s to our left and right without us turning our heads. The peripheral vision that helps us see what’s above and below us.
We normally don’t think about what we visualize from this vantage point. After all, looking at our shoes gets old pretty quick.
But we’re normally not hurtling 30 feet toward the ground. That changes things.
I was falling, but the water still looked distant. So I started flailing my legs, thinking that would somehow soften the blow.
Suddenly, I remembered the instructions I was given: Run off the edge and make sure you’re straight up when you hit the water.
I stopped moving my legs and let gravity run its course.
As soon I did this, something unexpected happened. I felt a strange sense of calm.
I let gravity do its work. Everything felt Zen.
Well, everything except that rushing sound in my ears. It kept getting louder and louder.
That sound was the air flying by me as I was in freefall. And it was getting louder because I was speeding up.
Suddenly, the water was right below me. I was close — painfully close — to impact.
I made a last ditch effort to straighten my legs. Then, SPLASH.
I hit the water like a ton of bricks. My feet and ankles felt the sting of impact.
After dropping close to 10 feet underwater, I started to ascend back to the surface. Then I slowly swam over to the ladder and climbed onto the deck.
My classmate approached me, holding my digital camera and a few other items I’d temporarily put in her care.
This whole crazy experience was her idea.
She was an NCAA champion diver, and we were in a video production class together. She was at the pool that morning filming a promo for a class project.
She had asked me to tag along to help her carry the video equipment, since some of the clips she was filming were from the 3 meter springboard — about 10 feet above the pool deck. I happily obliged.
“Wear your swim trunks,” she told me the day before the shoot. “That way, you can jump off the 10 Meter when we’re done.”
Now, I had just that. And the adrenaline had yet to wear off.
“Oh, that was something else!” I told my classmate. “Say, which height did you win the NCAA title in, again?”
“The 10 Meter,” she calmly replied.
I stared at her, awestruck.
Diving off the 10 Meter means walking to the edge of that 33 foot high platform and turning around in such a way that your toes are just about the only part of your body still making contact with that platform. It means propelling yourself backwards off the edge, headfirst. It means contorting your body into a set of elaborate twists and rolls as you’re falling. And it means entering the water with pinpoint precision.
It takes a leap of faith just to do this once. As NCAA champion, my classmate had done this hundreds of times — often in the heat of intense competition. And she executed it to precision when it mattered most.
This was no fluke. Three years after my leap of the 10 Meter, my classmate was in London, representing the United States in diving at the Olympic games. There’s no doubt that she’s the best athlete I’ve ever personally met.
Even so, her daily accomplishments from the diving platform put everything in perspective. That acute fear I’d felt moments earlier seemed downright silly now.
I took a deep breath, and resolved not to make such a big deal out of what I’d just done.
In the years since my plunge from the 10 Meter, I’ve had other aquatic adventures.
I’ve jumped off a 10 foot dock into a lake inlet. And off the top of a party barge into the middle of a different lake.
It was fun to take flight. And on scorching Texas summer afternoons, I dare say it was necessary to plunge into cooler waters.
Yet, both times, I failed to feel the exhilaration I did after I jumped off the 10 Meter. The apprehension was gone, but so was the rush of energy.
This was not because of differences in the height I jumped from. It was because of something far more fundamental.
My 10 Meter experience represented the first leap of faith I ever took. Quite literally.
I put myself in a position to do something both novel and uncomfortable. I felt the fear and I did it anyway.
I was better for the experience. I unlocked confidence and courage I didn’t realize I had before.
This confidence and courage came in handy months later, when I moved halfway across the country to a city I had never been to and started working in a field I had little experience in.
It helped me again years later, when I switched careers and moved to another new city without a job lined up.
And it has helped me in countless other, less-dramatic scenarios as well.
Feeling the fear and doing it anyway is a vital part of growing up.
For we will all encounter a new experience in our lives. Whether that starting a job, starting a family or starting to notice changes in our physical abilities. Or maybe even all three.
There’s no reference guide for these experiences. Sure, we can lean on the knowledge of those who’ve encountered these experiences before, but that won’t fully prepare us for what we feel in the moment.
We will feel apprehension — if not abject terror — as we navigate these experiences firsthand for the first time. This is normal.
Yet, our ability to make it through the changes, and to grow from the experience, only comes if we’re willing to take a leap of faith. To feel the fear and do it anyway.
And that journey has to start somewhere.
Maybe not on the top of a 10 Meter dive tower, as mine did. But somewhere.
So, let us resolve to be bolder. To look out upon that new experience on the horizon that terrifies us and to face it head on.
Let us resolve to take a leap of faith.
Our future depends on it.