Jumping Off a Cliff

About a year ago I decided to jump off a cliff.

After 10 years, I had a growing feeling that it was time for me to change jobs, to move to a new association so that I could keep learning. My conversations with my then boss soon turned into a serious discussion about dates and transition arrangements. We agreed terms and set an end-date, which was months away. I was agreeing to leave before having the next position lined up, but I fully expected to have another job offer safely in hand by then.

Leaving in this way was a free-fall, stepping from solid ground onto nothingness. I expected to grab onto a tree or bush along the way and this would become my path to a new secure place. But the market tanked, the economy failed, time passed, and I could see the ground below rushing toward me and it made me nervous.

I tried not to flail wildly as I was falling. As each fear came up, I examined it, meditated on it, felt its pain then accepted it. Then I did something to alleviate it, like rewriting my resume, signing up for different jobs boards, or planning for a reduced budget. I didn't scream and yell and bewail my situation. I accepted what I had started and just kept doing more and more to avoid impact. To avoid hitting the hard stony ground below.

But my end-date was getting nearer and I still hadn't a new job. Things were getting serious.

And then somewhere along the way I realized there was no stony bottom. That even were I to reach it, touch it, hit it, I wouldn't stop there. I would pass through the ground to the other side. It might be a strange place to me, of driving buses or serving Starbucks coffee. The passing through might be very painful. But there would simply be another life on the other side.

I would be alive. I could cope.

About that time I started to enjoy the fall. I realized that we are always falling. That the feeling of security, of being on stable ground, is an illusion. That grabbing onto jobs, friends or relationships for safety will always fail. We are always falling. Life is constant change.

And so I had nothing to lose. I risked trading on friendships and reached out to some old colleagues to offer to do project work for them. I started to plan my own company. I met with wonderfully intelligent and creative people to talk about how to set it up. And it was tremendously exciting. I was beginning to get better at falling. I was beginning to enjoy it.

The call did come with my new job offer, 20 minutes after I had handed in my keys and ID card and left the building after my last day, to start a new future.

And one part of me, the part that had begun to accept and anticipate a risky, exciting new future running my own business, was sad. I was going to take the safer option, grab the branch sticking out from the cliff wall.

But now I know that I'm good at falling, and I will step off the cliff again. And again. And again.