Let me indulge you in a travel story today. A couple of years ago, my husband and I went canyoneering in the Philippines. If you don’t know what it is, don’t worry. We didn’t either till the time when we stood on top of a cliff with safety jackets and helmets and the guide told us to jump into a stream of water 12 feet below us.
Google defines it as “the sport of jumping into a fast-flowing mountain stream and allowing oneself to be carried downstream at high speed.”
We were petrified at first but managed to have a ball of a time jump into fast-flowing mountain streams. We even did a 12 feet jump. Don’t believe me? You can see it here. We jumped into the stream many ways – straight jumps, one-leg out jumps, sliding into the stream forwards and backward.
But there was one jump I couldn’t do. Falling backward into the water. You had to let go completely and fall headfirst. No matter how many times I tried, in so many different places (short heights and long heights), I could not get myself to let go to that extent. I’d fail miserably and end up doing the old-fashioned forward jumps.
Why am I telling you this?
Earlier this week I woke up thinking the way I did canyoneering is how we let go of the past in our lives. We hold onto more than necessary, to begin with (see the first 3 seconds of me panting with fear before I jump), and even as we try letting our past go – the anger, the shame, the guilt – we don’t ever let it go completely. We hold on to the last few crumbs of being the victim, of being hurt, of being a consequence of other’s ill intentions – simply because we’d rather stick to the narrative we tell ourselves. And more so because we don’t know who we’d be without those stories.
What makes canyoneering so fun, is this “allowing oneself to be carried downstream at high speed.” The keyword being “allowing.”
Think about it, how remarkable would our lives be if we could freefall our way through life, even backward headfirst, without all this baggage.
You cannot travel to the Philippines now to check if you can completely let go and fall into the mountain stream backward.
But you can feel that lightness in you by letting go of all the past anchoring you down unnecessarily. And from that space of being light and easy and baggage-free can we allow our future to unravel at its own pace? Can we let go of our need to be controlling every step, every moment, and allow life to unfold?