Finding Purpose

Aging is an interesting process. Although the body changes, the mind remains somewhat the same. That is, mentally I don’t feel much older than when I was in high school. I’ve managed to retain my youthful outlook on life, which I suppose is a good thing, and I’ve gained some maturity along the way. Not a bad combination, really. However, the two can sometimes work against each other as I sought to find a purpose in life. In my youth, my purpose was to live and follow the script, as it were. By that I mean complete my education, find a job and career, get married, have kids, and then…and then what? Ironically, for many of us, our purpose is attached the phases of our lives, getting from point A to point B. Our society is predicated upon us hopscotching from one task to another. We go from elementary school to middle school to high school to college and so on. The process continues for decades. Therein we find our purpose - sort of. While meaningful at the time, our purpose is fleeting and transient, attached to a stage of our lives. As long as we are preoccupied with getting to the next stage, we mistakenly believe our purpose is intertwined with our lives. But what happens when there is no next stage? Or when the next stage offers little in the way of meaning and value?

As the father of twin teenage daughters who are nearing the end of high school, my purpose, as I saw it was drawing to a close. My little girls had become grown young women, seemingly in the blink of an eye. My education was more than complete, and I had, for all intents and purposes, a rewarding career. The journey of life, as established by modern American society, had plateaued. There was no next stage of my life that required conscious effort or active transition. As the saying goes, I had arrived. But arrived where? Still with a youthful outlook on life, I longed for adventure. I craved a new challenge, a new reason for my existence, something of substance that would give my life meaning. With several decades of experience under my belt and a graduate education to boot, I believed I still had something to offer. But what?

Well, about a year ago, I discovered skydiving. After completing my first tandem, I was hooked. I literally jumped in feet first and began working on obtaining my A license with the intent of working toward a D license (the highest certification) so I could become a tandem instructor. Having experienced the thrill of free fall, I wanted to introduce others to the sport. For many, jumping is about the adrenaline rush. I’ll admit that it is something that has to be experienced to be understood. But for me, skydiving was more than just a rush. It was an opportunity for personal growth. Believe me, the first time you go up in an airplane knowing you are going to jump out of it, you do a lot of introspection. A variety of thoughts go through your mind as the plane ascends to 14,000 feet. Sitting in the door, legs hanging out above the clouds, preparing to jump, your whole world shrinks to that moment. Nothing else exists. In fact, for me, just arriving at the drop zone, or DZ as it’s known, compresses my life to that very moment. Walking around the hangar, talking to instructors, staff, and fellow jumpers, the troubles of life dissipate. This is why so many view the sport as therapeutic. 

As the time to don the harness (for tandem jumpers) or rig gets closer, my heart beats a little faster. Having completed six jumps to date, I’m not as nervous as I was on my first jump. I do get anxious, though. Mentally, I rehearse the process of standing in the door, checking with my instructors, jumping, arching, and performing the required exercises in the air before pulling my chute and landing. Landing. Yeah, a word on that. Because ground school spends so much time reviewing emergency procedures (typically what is known as a high speed malfunction), I never gave landing much thought. Gravity was on my side, so I was going to land eventually. Steering a canopy wasn’t all that difficult, as I had discovered during my first few solo jumps. Landing accuracy was a bit of a challenge as I later learned. After landing short of the field on the tarmac and breaking my ankle in three places, I realized that landing was actually the most dangerous part of the sport. Until then, I had been preoccupied with having to cut away my main canopy and deploy my reserve, something that is rehearsed many, many times during ground school and reviewed prior to every jump. 

Upon returning to the sport six months after my accident and doing a level one tandem with my instructor, I realized my thinking had been wrong. I repeated ground school, this time with an emphasis on landing and flaring, which essentially puts the brakes on the chute. At no time after my accident did I ever feel like quitting the sport or giving it up. Why? Because in it I had found a new purpose in life. That purpose, as I saw it, was to get back in the saddle, to accomplish my goal of obtaining my license, and to allow my life to serve as an example to others that anything is possible. Too often in life we talk ourselves out of doing something because it seems too difficult. We become our own worst enemy and defeat ourselves before we begin. This is true in the Christian life as well. How many of us look in the mirror, assess our lives, most notably our shortcomings, and quit without ever trying? We tell ourselves we have nothing to offer the Kingdom of Heaven, that we’re lackluster Christians at best who fail to read our Bibles as frequently as we should, pray intermittently, and probably shouldn’t even go to Heaven when we die. Like many, we compare the worst in ourselves to the best in others (or what we perceive as their best). We convince ourselves we have no Christian purpose. 

Occasionally, though, God sends us a reminder that we do have a purpose. After spending six months recovering from two surgeries, and with fourteen screws, two plates, and synthetic ligaments, I arrived at the DZ the day after my birthday (because as always the weather is not conducive to skydiving on my birthday) to complete a level one tandem. (A level one tandem consists of wearing an altimeter, doing three touches of the hackie, which is what deploys the main canopy, waving off at 6,000 feet and deploying the main canopy, as well as flying the canopy to 1,500 feet.) Having just returned to work after recuperating and working from home for six months, a co-worker learned I had jumped. She approached me and commented how inspirational she found my life, that I would return to the sport after my injury. While that might not be of any significance to some, to me it was validation that what I was doing indeed had a purpose. I’ve learned in my years on this planet that many of us are more influential than we ever realize. We convince ourselves we have little or nothing to offer others, especially when it comes to faith. Sometimes, however, simply living our lives, pursuing a purpose, is an inspiration to others. 

Most of us will never know the impact our lives make on others. We live day to day never considering that a conversation, a word of encouragement, or the tenacity to pursue a goal will provide motivation and inspiration. Dean Karnazes, an ultramarathon runner, once remarked “that perhaps the greatest thing a person can ever do is inspire someone else.” While he writes books and lectures on running, just living his life, being who he was born to be, has inspired and encouraged many, myself included. A quote I read many years ago said, “For some, you will be the only Bible they ever read.” Sometimes our purpose in life, as Christians, is to simply be the person God created us to be - the person we were born to be, as it were, and be the best version of the Bible others read.