The Flight.
When spring break is brought up, what comes to mind for most people is a week of fun and serenity. Maybe your idea of your favorite spring break consists of fruit smoothies and beach houses, or maybe it’s a snowy day in the mountains.
Mine, on the other hand, is very different.
We’d been in Costa Rica for a few days, and things had been amazing-- full of swimming, good food, exploring rainforests, and so much more! Now, there had been a little detail my parents mentioned a few days before the trip that I was dreading. We were scheduled to go on a zipline course later in the day-- one that included a whole section of ‘superman’ ziplining. Now, if you don’t know what a superman zipline is, it’s basically a kind of zipline where instead of you being set up in a ‘sitting’ position, you’re essentially set up like a human battering ram… which looks ten times more terrifying than regular ziplining, something that was already scary to me. Reasonably, I was extremely nervous.
When we got to the course, I was in utter terror to hear that our superman line went right down the side of a hill. I was sure I wasn’t gonna be able to do it-- what if my harness broke halfway down? What if the wire snapped in half?? The overwhelming amount of anxiety I was feeling became so irrational, I started to think I couldn’t even make it on the easiest of the ziplines.
Fast forward to me, in the setup area, being hooked up to the superman line while crying. The view of the line was less than pleasant-- a diagonal drop down to another station that seemed like it was hundreds of miles away. My fears had gotten the best of me-- instead of going out of my comfort zone and trying something new, I was trying my absolute hardest to stay inside it. Finally, after what felt like years, I felt a tug at my harness, and---
I know how cheesy it sounds when I say this, but-- I really did feel like I was flying. The suddenness of it all caught me off guard from crying, and instead, I just looked around me. The view was breathtaking, to say the least. I could see the ocean from where I was, and the entire island around it-- all the stations, forests, and beaches I had seen on land were twice as pretty in the air. It was amazing!
After a while, I finally landed at the next station with a huge smile on my face-- I actually did it! By moving a little bit out of my comfort zone, I experienced something I truly loved.
