CONFIDENCE AND CERTAINTY
What I Learned
FROM A BAD PARACHUTE
BY JIM MCCORMICK
We all question our abilities at times . Uncertainty plagues us . It is even more intense if the ability we are questioning relates to something we have never tried or not succeeded at in the past .
Setbacks are common , but we rarely welcome them . We are inclined to respond negatively to adversity . It may be time to revisit that reflexive response .
I had an experience that caused me to reconsider whether a negative response to adversity is always justified when I was confronted with a life-threatening situation .
It was mid-morning on a warm and pleasant Saturday . I was in the midst of my first skydive of the day . It was my 2,123rd jump since having taken up the sport fifteen years before .
After a minute of freefall and about 5,000 feet above the ground , I parted ways with my fellow jumpers to get enough separation to open my parachute safely . I initiated opening around 3,000 feet above the earth .
My parachute opened with some twists in the lines between the parachute and me . This is not that uncommon . What was different this time was that I was not able to clear the twists .
The twists in the lines caused my parachute to take on an asymmetrical shape . Receiving asymmetrical inputs , the canopy did what it is designed to do and initiated a turn -- that ’ s how it ’ s steered . The problem occurred when the turn quickly became a rapid , diving downward spiral that was spinning me a full 360 degrees about once every second . This was a problem .
I looked up to assess my canopy and saw something I don ’ t often see – the horizon clearly visible ABOVE the trailing edge of my canopy . This meant my canopy and I were now on roughly the same horizontal plane . In that I could see the
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