Dallin at the Royal Gorge…photo by Karen
Take heights, for example (I wish you could). I have no idea why I become anxious when I look down from a high place. It didn’t used to be that way. When I was a boy, we went on a family vacation to Watkins Glen, New York. Watkins Glen has a state park that is actually a huge ravine with trails that run through the trees and rocks and boulders. My family was hiking along one of these trails, very high up. I went ahead of everybody, around a bend. There was a rock/cement wall along the side of the trail, protecting hikers from the perilous fall. I stood up on the wall, and when my mom came around the bend, I said, “Goodbye, cruel world!” and I jumped. Of course, I landed on a ledge about six feet below. My mom about had a heart attack. Boy, was she mad!
That really happened. My brother and sisters still tell the story. But I could never do that now—you couldn’t get me to stand on the wall! Why?
Flash forward to my freshman year of college. The University of Missouri has a Medical Center that is about seven or eight stories high. My roommates and I discovered that if you go to the top floor, there is a trap door that will get you onto the roof of the building. On the roof there is a ledge that goes all the way around the building, about twelve inches wide. I remember getting on the ledge and skipping, dancing, waving to the little people below. I could never do that again. What happened?
Karen and I went to the Royal Gorge in Colorado on our honeymoon. There is a photo of me standing out of the bridge that spans the Gorge. If you look closely, you can see that my smile is frozen, my hands are gripping the protective fence, and my knuckles are white.
Let’s see, freshman year, 18 years old, no fear. Marriage, 27 years old, debilitating fear. Why?
Could it be dreams? I can remember falling and then jerking awake, flooded with relief that I was still intact. Someone once told me that you’re okay in your falling dreams as long as you don’t land, but if you land then you die in your sleep. Maybe I landed but survived. I don’t remember. But I do remember having dreams where I could fly, soaring around without a care in the world…so that kind of shoots down my dream theory.
While I’m uncertain about how I acquired the fear, I kind of get the basis for it. Heights impose no real danger at all (as long as you are securely grounded). Unlike, say, bullets, heights cannot really hurt you. The building or the mountain or the rollercoaster is not going to throw you off. What are you afraid of? YOU ARE AFRAID YOU ARE GOING TO JUMP! Not that you want to jump, not that you are suicidal, not even that you might slip. But just that this tiny little impulse will take control, and you’ll do it, and you’ll immediately change your mind, but it will be too late. You are afraid of yourself.
This fear, this phobia, bugs me because it is so limiting. But how do you overcome it? How do you confront a fear of heights? Jump?
I have learned to live with the fear. I can look over an edge, or ride a train through the mountains, or take a ski lift (in the summer—I don’t ski), or even hike on an unprotected ledge. But never carefree, never with joy—always that queasy feeling. I have a mantra. I repeat in my mind, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me,” and I move forward. Like I said, it’s not about fears going away—it’s about handling them.
Believe it or not, I — who has jumped out of a perfectly good plane at 14,000 feet and who has three times thrown myself off a platform into the air with only a bungee cord around me and who has gone up in a hot air balloon and stood in the middle of the “closed due to dangerous ice” bridge over a extremely deep gorge near New Weinstein and actually jumped off the high dive at the wee age of two — am afraid of heights. I make myself conquer that fear over and over and over. I hate looking over a ledge and actually have nightmares about the balcony at Steve’s Hawaii condo. It is always Him who I feel right as I jump or do whatever crazy thing I have made myself do. However, I still won’t look over the edge of the rail at the Hawaii condo!
Like all things when old, life is a ceremony of of losses. I don’t miss my ability to handle heights, ferris wheels, chair lifts, etc. when I was young I thrilled at those things and did them. Peace, contentment are so much more enjoyable now. What I miss is holding my face to the sun, spending hours on the beach, dancing, swimming for hours in the ocean. But I do take comfort in the fact that I was bold and adventurous. I know you were too!