Aug 9, 2016
By Dia Bianca Lao
Floating My Inhibitions Away in Australia
Pointing to the skydiving ad, I looked at my friend while doing a poor attempt at puppy dog eyes. “Let’s do this! Please? It would be so epic if we skydive together,” I impulsively said in a rare show of my inner daredevil. My friend looked at me as if I were insane. I probably was at the time. We’re talking about the easily frightened me from four years ago here, who wasn’t so thrilled of extreme rides and animals.
Even when my friend outright rejected my offer, I started convincing her relentlessly. One time we were eating and she started spouting reasons why she’s afraid of trying it.
“Oh, but the jump is 14,000 feet high! Can you imagine how high that is?”
“It’s advertised as the highest tandem jump in Australia!”
“What if the parachute doesn’t work and we die?”
Up to that point in time, I didn’t really think things through. I didn’t bother to know the details for fear of losing my nerve. Ignorance is bliss, right? So when she pointed out the facts, I started to think that maybe skydiving wasn’t such a good idea. Sure, I enjoyed the indoor skydiving simulator in Malaysia but this is the real deal. From someone like me, who doesn’t ride roller coasters that may result in wetting myself, my all-too-familiar cowardice came back in full force. Then my friend chose that moment to change her mind.
My friend ended up paying for me so I won’t have any choice but to go skydive with her since she knows I can’t stand wasting money. Then the countdown to the day I’ll be skydiving began. I was a jittery mess to say the least until I found myself on a plane. “There’s no backing out now,” my tandem master told me. How comforting!
I tried to delay the inevitable for as long as I could by asking people to go before me until it was my turn and I was on my back ready to fall out of the plane. Arching like a banana as practiced, my tandem master who was strapped to me did a backflip into the open air. My eyes were closed and my heart dropped when he did the backflip.
The next thing I knew, I was floating and I could see blue skies and the expansive horizon before me. I loved the magnificent views and the serenity from the silence that greeted me from high above! I felt the rushing wind while taking in as much of the view as I can with a smile that could have cracked my face wide open.
I won’t forget marveling at the sea of clouds beneath me, the ocean kissing the shore and the breathtaking aerial view of Byron Bay. It was sensational and the most alive I have ever felt. At that moment, I felt free as a bird like I could do anything. I was flying over people like Supergirl, for goodness sake! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s just a crazy woman who jumped out of a plane!
After experiencing the most glorious seconds of my life in mid-air, I wondered why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere all day every day. Then I thought about people and how we’re so shackled by our preconceptions and fears. If I went with my fears that kept screaming: “Jump out of a plane? Me?! I must be out of my mind! I could fall to my death,” I would have been thinking “if only” instead of saying “I can and so I did”.
After conquering my fear of heights in the most epic way, I came to the conclusion that
daredevils may die early but the cautious don’t live at all. Now I constantly challenge myself and try to let go of my inhibitions to enjoy life freely even in cases when my conservative and overly concerned Catholic family might disapprove. Wear a bikini to the beach? Watch me flaunt what I got. Bathe nude in a Japanese hot spring with other nude women like it’s totally normal? I got this. It’s liberating to be comfortable in my own skin. Most importantly, now I know that I can do whatever I want, whenever I want to and that I’ve got the smarts and the heart to make it happen.
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About the Author
Dia Bianca Lao
Dia may look like your average Asian bookworm but she is always up for an adventure! Having skydived twice in Australia and New Zealand, she has lived in 3 countries and visited 16 others. Armed with her selfie stick, big tote, and even bigger dreams, she embarks for new and faraway places for her next dose of adrenaline rush. Follow her travel adventures on her blog: Wewillgoplaces.com, where she confesses experiences from bathing nude in a Japanese onsen to munching on Hello Kitty dim sum.