I took the plunge during the first week of Spring term my freshman year. I think it was the final day of March -- for those of you in my year, you might recall that the temperature that week was unusually hot. April had yet to show its face, but the Green was littered with anxious sunbathers and panting canines. It was odd, really, but upon reflection, not terribly odd. After all, I would expect extraordinary circumstances to surround one of life's pivotal moments, such as this was.
I had just played two rounds of racquetball with a friend of mine. I don't remember having hit the ball with excessive zeal, but I was saturated with pungent sweat after only a few volleys. The chamber was just suffocating. It was as if we had been demonstrating the Ideal Gas Law for a maniacal physics professor. By hitting the racquetball again and again, faster and faster, we had simulated the condition created when moving particles in a contained space accelerate: the pressure and temperature of the enclosed court had increased and we were bystanders in the stifling heat of the particles' wake.
In any case, understand that it was balmy inside the court and we needed immediate relief. My pal proposed jumping off the ropeswing. It was at once a marvelous and preposterous plan. To me, the ropeswing was a distant entity enshrouded in legend. A fabulous flight, it was quipped, and an experience one would never forget. On most blazing hot days, I would have been a fool to pass up the chance. But lo, it was March. The idea is nonsense, I concluded. There would be ice and other half-frozen debris. Sure, the testimonies were convincing, but common sense told me that today they wouldn't hold ground. With an iron fist and a sound argument, I refused.
We were there in five minutes. I've never been all that persuasive. Upon seconds of our arrival to the genuflecting tree, my friend -- a veteran in this escapade -- had stripped to his boxers, scurried up the primitive ladder, dutifully tied the thin cord around the bottom knot and swung to his adventurous heart's content into the black water. When he emerged from the river, he bellowed like a Fury, swam quickly to the shore and clambered up the tree's generous roots to dry, warm safety.
And I was to follow suit.
With exaggerated caution, I climbed one plank at a time. When I reached the top wrung of the ladder, I glanced down and promptly decided to forget the idea altogether. When water looks that cold, I thought, it must be ten times colder in reality. I can endure the heat. Just put one foot under the other and make your way down. Embrace your hesitation and concede to your fears, coaxed my brain. Cowardice is just a fault, not a vice. And, come on, it's only a ropeswing.
But the boy on the shore had a different message. My friend, squatting on the dusty dirt below, was goading me onward, teaching me how to secure the bottom cord and to hold above the knots when I swung. His instruction completely lacked any taunting or mocking, and I sensed no impatience in his tone. Instead, there was a calm, reassuring ring to his words. His voice was like a hand on my shoulder. He told me simply to try to ignore the inevitable frigidity and surrender to the impending exhilaration. After a moment of internal debate, I understood. Then, I let myself go and took the plunge, sailing blissfully through the air and releasing at the height of the pendulum's swing.
Now I am the boy who stands on the shoreline. Every time I meet people who haven't taken the plunge, I am impelled to accompany them to that hole in the forest down on the Connecticut River so that they, too, may learn a lesson. Standing beneath them, I try to be as quietly persuasive to them as my friend was to me, beaming when they come to understand and then fly over the water.
Life is full of risks worth taking. We have to learn to ignore the consequences, to abandon that way of thinking that so often prevents us from trying something new. This is what a good friend and a line of rope taught me one day early in spring.
Please don't take away the ropeswing; give others a chance to lose themselves in the moment.
