"DON'T BE CAREFUL. BE CONFIDENT" Tom Cruise

I WRITE - I TRAVEL - I SHOOT PHOTOS 

I LOVE AN ADVENTURE!

Authors page:  www.facebook.com/naninecase2021

 website:  www.writtenmusings.com/naninecase.html

I watched You Tube as actor, Tom Cruise, was getting ready to board an airplane and perform another of his AMAZING jumps for his latest Mission Impossible movie. The sixty-one-year-old looked confidently into the camera shaking his index finger, and said, with his engaging smile, “DON’T BE CAREFUL BE CONFIDENT!”

After the You Tube clip of Tom's death-defying stunts finished I flashed to my own experience (like Tom, I, too, was in my sixties), remembering the excitement coursing through my body that day I stepped into the small airplane with my Mel Gibson look-alike professional skydiver - to whom I’d be strapped for the several thousand foot jump.

John and I were with a group of friends motorcycling the byways of Florida when I spotted parachutes dotting the sky above the Deland Airport. “I’ve always wanted to jump out of an airplane. Let’s go and watch,” I urged.

Twenty minutes later we were all leaning on our bikes in the airport parking lot, my biker companions wagering bets: “I say she’ll jump… I say she won’t.”

Said John, “Oh, she’ll jump!”

 

Crouched in the plane’s open doorway I gasped at the sprawling scene before my sky partner and I. Then, and without pause, we jumped into the bright blue void, my arms outstretched and my legs pulled back in a sky diver’s posture. For several seconds I experienced the unparalleled THRILL of a FREE fall!

When Mel pulled the cord and the parachute jerked our bodies downward toward the marked landing spot, I experienced my second, and different, THRILL. Utter silence filled the surround while we drifted in space, the thin cloth suspended from cords our only promise of safety. I should mention I had to sign a waiver releasing the company from any responsibility in case of an accident or death.

CAREFUL certainly wasn’t on my mind that day as I suited up for the spur of the moment decision to jump thousands of feet into space; just an over-abundance of CONFIDENCE.

WHEN DRIVEN BY FEAR, WE ARE DEBILITATED. 

WHEN CONFIDENCE PREVAILS, 

WE ARE MOTIVATED TO REACH GREAT HEIGHTS!!!