Leap of Faith via Women's Day

One summer, I got out of my middle-aged rut by acting like a kid again.

By Kerry Egan

"Just jump!" a chorus of children yelled from the base of the diving board. I bounced up and down with my back to the pool. Then I nodded at them and took a few deep breaths. I bounced some more and threw my legs into the air. The world went topsy-turvy, and my feet hit the water. At the age of 43 and after weeks of trying, I'd finally done a backflip.

Facing My Fears
When was the last time you learned how to do something that scared you? For me, it was the backflip. Before that, I don't remember. Avoiding challenges just seemed to creep up on me without my noticing as I got older. Part of it was fear, to be honest, and part was complacency and the busy-ness of live in middle age.

As I practiced the backflip, the kids seemed to take it for granted that I would do belly flops or land hard on om back. And they freely commented on my failures. "Looked like that hurt." "You need to get higher." "It's like you just freaked out in the middle of the air." "That was so bad." The teenage boys laughed at me like hyenas. Of course, they laughed at one another like hyenas, too.

But they weren't being mean. They didn't seem to be implying that I should be embarrassed or stop trying. They offered tips and would answer my questions as they waited to do their own crazy spins and giant cannonballs. There was something strangely liberating in the tacit understanding that I was terribly right now, but I'd get better.

The adults never acknowledged my attempts until I actually did the backflip. "That was so great!" one said. "It makes me think I could do it, too," commented another."

"If I can, you can," I told them.

They smiled and shook their heads. "I don't understand how you don't care about messing up or looking bad, about people seeing you," one of them added.

It's true: Some people will judge. But while getting older might make me more afraid of hurting myself, it's done the opposite to my fear of embarrassment. It's a sweet and liberating trade-off.

The Wisdom of Age
"I always thought I'd have more time," a 104-year-old woman said every time I saw her. She was a hospice patient, and I was visiting her as a chaplain. She realized the humor in her comment, but it was the truth, she insisted. Even after more than a century on earth, she was surprised at how quickly her life had gone by, how little time it really was, when she looked back over all of it.

"I wish I'd realized just how young I was 20 years ago," she used to say.

Twenty years ago, she'd been 84.

You'll never again be as young as you are now. You'll never have as much time to overcome your fears as you do in this moment. These are cliches, but they're more accurate than we often care to admit.

So that leaves us with some decisions: Fail to try what we yearn to do, or stop caring back potential judgment. Regret that we did not learn how to fly through the air backward into cold, waiting water 20 years ago, or decide to learn now. Remain mired in the fears of our younger selves, or embrace the liberation of aging. We get to choose.

Kerry Egan is a hospice chaplain and writer. Her most recent book is On Living.