What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.
—Tony Hoagland, ‘A Color of the Sky”
What could possibly go wrong?
You read or hear that phrase a lot these days from comedians and bloggers. It’s alarmism disguised as sarcasm. Cutting FEMA just in time for hurricane season? What could possibly go wrong? Teenagers getting their hands on everyone’s private data? What could possibly go wrong?
We say this to ourselves sometimes, too, and just as sarcastically, for it is the fear of what could go wrong that can stop us from stepping outside our comfort zone and into the unknown, the deep end, the netherworld of our anxieties. Fear of failure. Fear that we’ll look ridiculous. Fear of what other people might think. The old familiar doubts that are the opponents of personal growth.
It doesn’t help that we we are sometimes told to be sure to go into whatever it is we’re contemplating with eyes wide open, as if we were flirting with disaster. But what if we flipped that? Might we have better luck stretching beyond our self-imposed borders if we took the plunge with eyes firmly shut?
I learned to close my eyes in the unlikeliest of circumstances. Every summer, our parents would take us to a huge municipal swimming pool that seemed worlds away from my little town, even though it was only 12 miles south of us: Jordan Pool. In the deep end there were three diving boards of varying risk, kind of like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The first one was just a foot high, the middle one four feet high, and the high dive was, if I recall correctly, nearly ten feet off the ground. The lines of kids waiting to use the diving boards were in inverse proportion to the height of each board, the low board having the longest line and the high dive the shortest.
Of course, according to the unofficial rules of deep-end life, at some point you had to be one of the few, the proud, the shaky-legged and confront the high dive. So you worked your way up, starting with turns on the other two diving boards before joining the short line behind the high dive, where you wished there were a longer wait. Too soon, it was your turn. You climbed that long ladder up, aware that everyone waiting in line behind you was watching you. You tiptoed your way to the end of the diving board and looked down.
At Jordan Pool the high divers broke into three camps.1 The first were those whose fear got the better of them and simply jumped off feet first. The second were those who dove in using classic form, arms overhead, hands folded in a point. And then there was my brother, Tom. Tom was part fish. We could be at Jordan Pool for hours and he would never leave the water. Plus, Tom did something no one else did: a modified sailor dive off the high dive, head first with his arms folded behind his back.2
It was gutsy. Hurtling down from at least 20 feet above the water line at the height of the dive, with only your skull to break the impact. What could possibly go wrong?
Of all the achievements in my life, few can compare with the first afternoon I did a sailor dive off the high dive at Jordan Pool. I was scared out of my mind. I had gone off the high dive a lot, but I always chose at the last second to do a normal dive instead of the sailor dive. That afternoon, however, I was determined to earn the stares and dropped jaws that Tom got whenever he did his sailor dive. I climbed the ladder that day knowing this was the appointed hour.
I got to the top, walked to the end of the board and gave it a few test pumps. I stepped three-quarters of the way back and took a deep breath, then stepped forward, left, right, left, hopped on the edge of the board to give it some spring, and then felt my body lift into the air. I rotated to point myself head first and clutched my hands behind my back as I began my descent.
And I closed my eyes.
Splash! Suddenly the world was quiet, the muffled sound of hundreds of pool dwellers seemingly miles away as I entered the underwater world and a new age. I kicked my feet, twirled my body upward and swam back to the surface. Nobody knew it, but the kid whose head popped up after that dive was not the same kid who had plunged in seconds before.
That first sailor dive was to be followed by many more over the next few years. After that first day, though, I always did it a bit differently. I made an adjustment. From then on, whenever I did the sailor dive, I would keep my eyes open. Because now I knew what I had to look forward to. I learned that much of the joy was in the journey—the view from the top, the launch into space, the graceful arc, the thrill of the split decision to fold my arms behind my back, and the circle of blue quickly rising up to greet me. All of it contributed to a feeling of transformation each and every time I resurfaced and re-entered the world I’d left behind.
Funny. I had taken that first risk seeking admiration but found something far more rewarding. I then approached every subsequent sailor dive with eyes wide open—not out of caution but out of anticipation: I didn’t want to miss a second of the journey. I was surprised. All those times I had changed my mind at the last second, standing on the edge, I hadn’t considered all the things that could possibly go right.
I’m sticking to dives here. There were lots of jack knives and cannonballs, and some flips.
Tom was also the only kid I ever saw do a potato, basically an upside down cannonball, head first. (By the way, the classic sailor dive is head first with your arms at your sides.)