Imagine How Great It Would Be, Unafraid

What would you do if fear were not a factor?

I was driving along County Road A, headed east, passing dairy farms and hundred-acre fields, when I spied a lone person paragliding above the distant tree line.

I tried to imagine what it would feel like to float along, alone in the air on that cold, glorious morning; to experience that bird’s-eye perspective on the landscape.

I would see things that most people never see, and at the same time, I would be flying--not like a bird, more like a kite.  But flying!, with the whole expansive sense of freedom that flying confers.

I imagined that I would be silently rejoicing in the luck, competence, and courage that enabled me to have such an incredible experience.

Probably, I concluded, that paraglider was one of the happiest people in the whole county at that particular moment.

Always before, when I saw a paraglider, they looked like something fished out of a box of Cracker Jacks, untangled, and dropped from a flight of stairs: A spectacle of doom.

Frankly, I pitied them.

But putting my own fear aside...

How amazing would it be to jump out of a plane, from 13,000 feet above the earth!?

To fall and float through the air, long enough to think about it for a while, and at the same time seeing everything for miles and miles.

It's a wonder more people don't do this.

But then, crossing a creek on a log, I freeze in the middle, can't move a muscle, and require assistance, overcome by cold, clammy panic.

Riding motorcycles.  Climbing down from trees.

All these things frighten me.

And yes, paragliding would probably frighten me, too: dangling like that from a bit of string.

But wouldn't it be the most amazing experience, unafraid?