High Speed Sabbatical
I have a story I’d like to share with you.
I’ve been under the radar for a while.
Multiple Sclerosis isn’t an easy thing to live with. At least, it hasn’t been easy for me. I’m always pained, fatigued, confused, and my body is always resisting my wishes.
I was raised not to complain. I was always reminded that, “others have it so much harder.”
And that is true. Despite all that has followed from my MS, my life has been blessed in innumerable ways. But that doesn’t mean that year after year with a degrading central nervous system — and all the uncertainty that comes with it — isn’t also difficult. It’s not a contest. This has just been far more difficult — for me — than I could ever admit.
You don’t see all that’s happening beneath the surface because I’m very good at covering. It’s not even really “covering” because I’ve always been open about my health. It’s more like “minimizing.” That’s a bug, not a feature. Like all of us with largely invisible health conditions, I’m caught in a dilemma: am I completely open about everything that I deal with (which you don’t want to hear and I don’t want to talk about), or do I run the risk that others think I’m flakey or lazy or some other bad trait I haven’t yet imagined?
I’m always making a thousand little extra calculations that get me through the world unnoticed. They help me get things done and keep from drawing undue attention. I just want to live my life as well as I can. Something close to “normal” happens to take me a lot of extra effort that you’ll never see or appreciate.
My “covering” isn’t a lie. I just don’t want pity. I don’t want those “looks.” I don’t want the hassle. I don’t want the uncomfortable interactions with others that simply don’t know what to do with the true extent of my illness. None of us wants that.
A couple of years ago, I was launching a company, a book, and a podcast. Things were on the right track with the typical challenges facing any new venture, but something wasn’t quite right.
Me.
I quietly put the brakes on everything. I finally came to the place where I could admit to myself that, after all these years, I wasn’t handling this as well as my ego needed me to believe. The last couple of decades had warped my life beyond anything I’d planned as a young man. So I pulled an “Irish Fade” and mostly disappeared from life.
Decades of chronic health challenges had ground me down. They had crushed my natural optimism and resilience. I really was at the end of the line in every way. My fight was gone and MS had me down for the count.
I needed to go deeper. I needed to be more painfully honest about my journey than I’ve ever been able to be before. I needed to become the man who could deliver the message I was compelled to share.
I had to take stock of my current abilities. I had to study and rebuild my diminished capacities. I had to devise new workarounds to keep my health from getting in the way of what I wanted to accomplish. MS is a moving target; we must continually adapt even to hold still. And I had to honestly evaluate whether I still had this venture in me.
I still had important things to do with my life — well, important to me, anyway. I needed to prove to myself that I could still achieve something meaningful from scratch. Especially given those days I have a tough time just getting out of bed, putting on my pants, and shifting to another room to try to work a little at the computer.
I needed a serious stretch goal. I needed to be a complete novice again. I needed to prove myself with an ambition I had no natural talent for. Being honest with myself, I had to admit that I hadn’t really stretched myself at something new in a long while. I used to do that all the time. But as my MS became more pronounced, I was protecting myself by making my world smaller, and protecting my ego by excusing it away.
So I did what anyone would have done: I hatched a wacky plan to become a skydiver. Not just a bucket list jump out of an airplane. An honest-to-goodness, fully licensed, rated, and current skydiver.
A few years ago, as I lay paralyzed in my front lawn from an MS exacerbation, staring up at a mockingly beautiful blue sky, I gave up on this dream I’d cherished from childhood. As silly as it seems, giving up the goal of becoming a skydiver was emotionally crushing. I’d lost so much to MS that I wasn’t sure how I’d cope with losing something else so close to my heart.
Besides, the first thing they tell you when you’re diagnosed with MS is to “avoid stress.” Skydiving throws your acute stress response open to 11. It is primal fear. It was also the litmus test for whether I’d be able to stand up to the stresses of one more round of entrepreneurship. If I was up to the challenge of reclaiming my skydiving dream, then I knew I could see my dream of “Your Life Lived Well” to fruition.
But I knew how wonky and erratic my system had become. How could I trust myself to save myself plummeting to earth at terminal velocity? Every time? There’s not much room for error on a skydive. With care, planning, and work — and a lot of help — I thought I might be able to do it.
Somehow, I was going to overwhelm my MS into submission. I would fling my body at the Earth as many times as it took for it to start listening to me. It wasn’t my “Year of Living Dangerously.” It was my year-and-a-half of choosing life in the face of fear.
It took me almost twice as long as most students to get my A License. But then I ripped out over 450 jumps in the next 15 months, including better than one a day through 2020, and I picked up a Coach rating along the way. A respectable pace by most standards. Altogether, I logged more than 500 jumps over a year-and-a-half.
Now, I can say (with just a little pride) that I am a skydiver. A comfortable native of the air.
But I learned something else about myself now, too: there’s no doubt that multiple sclerosis makes things more difficult. Sadly, I have to admit that I don’t have the same capacities I once had. Yet despite all that, I know from experience that, in difficult circumstances, I can save myself every time.
I took to the skies to find my joy, my passion, and my confidence once more.
Skydiving saved my life.
And I’m armored in the conviction that I can do this.
We’ve been releasing podcast episodes regularly for months now. My book is out on October 12th. I’m now delivering speeches and classes. And my company is open for pursuing its mission of improving lives touched by chronic illness.
On my best day, I am still clumsy on the ground. My gait is unsteady. I bump into things. My hands sometimes stubbornly refuse to work.
But I still fly.