This summer I found myself on the side of a 2700 metre high mountain in Austria. This was rather unusual as I am NOT very fond of heights.  What followed was even more unusual.  The man next to me suggested I put on a harness and get ready to jump off the side of the mountain.   At this point no money had exchanged hands.  There had been no briefing.  But I had signed some form of cursory disclaimer in very small print on the side of a gusty mountain which I imagine said something like, if you die it has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with us.  No refunds. Under ANY circumstances.  Ok, ok.   Yes, I was about to go paragliding.  My amiable German guide said, “when I say walk, walk, when I say run, run.” On the rather sketchy gravel strewn drive up the mountainside I had learned that he had gone paragliding with a friend in his twenties and had fallen in love with it.  It was now pretty much all he did.

Well I was fine walking, and then of course once we started actually leaving the side of the mountain, I stopped walking.  Isn't that a perfectly RATIONAL response?  Especially for a man who is, to put it mildly, not so fond of the high life.

At this point, he emphasised his earlier instruction, “RUN.”  Ok, he was serious, and I refreshed my efforts and RAN.  I swore.  I spoke to my parents.  I found god.  The next thing I knew I was soaring like an eagle high up above the earth.  I felt very tranquil. I trusted my co-pilot.  He told me to lean to the left, I did, and we moved leftwards, then we did the same thing to the right.  I felt remarkably comfortable.  We chatted.  I could see the forests below.  I could see cars.  I could minuscule buildings.

A big jump into the unknown.  You have to trust your guide, even if you have never met them before.  My guide had a reassuring demeanour, and I reasoned, well, he was still alive wasn’t he?  I didn’t need to see his paper work.  I had no idea what paragliding involved.  In fact, when I had asked him, “how do we land?” His reply was, “I will tell you about that later?”  Ah ok.  I thought we would be going through all of this before take off, and that there would be lots of opportunities for me to chicken out!  But no, we were straight into things.  And he was going to tell me how we would land when were MID-FLIGHT!  Still I was reassured by him, and in my bones I just felt comfortable that he knew what he was doing.  In fact, halfway through the flight he asked me if I was happy to do some more acrobatic manoeuvres.  Indeed I was.  He pulled some chords and we span around.  I felt dizzy and exhilarated.  The analyst Neville Symington took up flying small plans in later life.  He enjoyed the precarious nature of the experience of being so close to the elements with only a flimsy  protection.  He would fly around Australia with his family and dog. There was something enlivening about being up in the sky.  For sure, I would have been safer, watching the birds and paragliders from the safety of a cafe.  Couldn't I just enjoy some dreams about flying, rather than actually flying.  I don't bounce when I fall nowadays as well as I used to after all.

But sometimes life demands that we throw ourselves into something unknown, and frankly terrifying.

Even though I was only up in the sky for ten or fifteen minutes, I have returned to the experience in my mind many times. My feeling is that paragliding is very different to jumping off a mountain in a wingsuit. Surely, that is more about facing or escaping death.  More “endeadening” than “enlivening”?  As we approached the landing, my guide finally told me, “keep your feet up”. Oh, ok, I thought I would be running, potential breaking my feet.  But I was going to land on my bottom. We floated past a clay tennis court where I had been hitting earlier in the week, and landed, perfectly, on a golf course.  It was a sublime experience.  I really did not know how the experience would begin or how it would end.  However, my co-pilot knew just what to say, and when to say it.  He did not say too much.  Just enough.  However much you read about therapy, or read about an analyst, nothing can replace the experience of being with another.  It is a jump into the unknown.  But make sure it is enlivening, not deadening.