When I was fourteen I was invited to go rappelling with my friends. Rappelling is a sport where a person descends a cliff or rock face using a harness and ropes to assist them in their descent. It's sort of like rock climbing in reverse. It sounded like a lot of fun and I was very excited to go.
I still remember the rush I felt as we arrived at the base of the cliff and began the steep climb to the top. It wasn't a very tall cliff because several of us had never been rappelling before, and the experienced members of our group wanted us to begin on a cliff which offered an easy path down with no overhangs or other technical features which would make the descent difficult for beginners.
I watched as the ropes were tied off and tried to learn as much as I could about this new sport. We were given instruction at the top of the cliff and then watched as several of the experienced guys hopped over the lip of the cliff and bounced their way down to the bottom. It looked so simple, and I remember thinking to myself that this would be easy. I was helped into my harness, and after a quick inspection to ensure everything was in order, I was told to relax and enjoy the trip down.
Now, there is more than one way to make the descent, but the easiest way for beginners is to have them plant their feet on the edge of the cliff with their back to the drop off and then to let enough rope slide through their hands so that their body falls back until it is nearly parallel with the ground. At this point, they are sticking out from the cliff at roughly ninety degrees and are almost perpendicular to its face. The idea is to then use your legs to hop out away from the cliff while you simultaneously loosen your grip on the rope without letting go completely, and then, after descending for several feet, grab the rope tightly enough to stop your descent and force your legs back into the cliff face. Then, just keep doing that as you hop your way down the cliff. Simple.
Well, I planted my feet and let the rope slip through my hands and then, when I was almost perpendicular to the cliff face, I grabbed the rope tightly and stopped dead. So far so good, but in that instant, I learned something about myself I had never before suspected. In that moment I realized I was deathly afraid of heights and I was literally frozen with fear.
It caught me completely by surprise. I had already taken my first plane flight and found it exhilarating. I regularly climbed to the tops of trees without any fear whatsoever. I loved hiking up mountains and on several trips had walked along narrow cliff faces loving every minute of it and was even able to walk to the edge of this cliff a few moments earlier and peer over its edge without even a second thought. But something changed inside me when I found myself hanging by a rope from the top of that cliff with no prospect of coming back up. Up to that point in time, it was the most terrifying moment of my life.
It took my friends several minutes and what seemed like an eternity to talk me down and I think I had them all scared that they wouldn't succeed in getting me off the cliff. None of them were sure what to do next and I began to hear a note of desperation in their tone as they talked with me which didn't help, and only served to reinforce my fear.
This fear was totally irrational, and I was completely safe, but it was also so entirely compelling that it was undeniable and I couldn't react to it logically. I remember trying to block out everything but the words of the guys trying to talk me down and to logically convince myself that I was OK. It was one of the loneliest and most difficult conversations I have ever had. And yes, at that moment, talking to myself seemed like a good idea and even a sensible thing to do. Slowly, I was able to talk myself off that cliff and make my way down to the bottom. Everyone was relieved. No one suggested that I try it again.
As I was standing there someone pointed to me and told me that I was bleeding. The whole side of my shirt was soaked in blood and as I peeled my shirt back away from my side, a really nasty gash was revealed where the rope had cut into my side as I made my descent. I was so terrified by my experience that I didn't feel the pain of the rope as it cut its way into my side. The wound was so severe that is took a couple of months to heal completely, but I didn't feel a thing. Such was the power of the fear I felt that day. I was so firmly in its grasp that even pain was pushed completely from my conscious thought, and I felt nothing.
You might be thinking, given the title of this post, that I felt pressured to do something I wasn't comfortable doing. That I never would have gone rappelling if my friends hadn't pushed me into doing it. But that's not true. I was excited to go and hadn't yet discovered my fear of heights. My fear of heights surprised me as much as anyone there that day. The real lesson in peer pressure came a couple of years later when my friends and I were on a trip to Lake Powell, and the preceding story serves only as background to what follows.
Lake Powell is a paradise for boaters and water skiers. It is a warm placid lake with hundreds of miles of shore line to explore. There are slot canyons and Indian ruins to see and the red sandstone cliffs are beautiful when drenched in the receding light of the spectacular sunsets common to that area. Some of the cliffs extend above the water over a hundred feet. A couple of days into our trip, the inevitable happened, someone suggested that we go cliff jumping into the lake.
Lake Powell was formed when a dam was built in a canyon carved out by the Colorado river. On either side of the river were cliffs stretching hundreds or even thousands of feet straight up into the air, so when the river was dammed and the water finally found its level it created a very deep reservoir with the tops of these sandstone cliffs towering above the deep black depths of the water below. It was easy to find a spot with water that reached hundreds of feet deep right up to the base of the cliff.
The boats were anchored at the bottom of a cliff we estimated to be sixty or seventy feet in height and my friends jumped into the water and began swimming to shore challenging each other, bragging, and competing for the honor of being first to jump. It was the sort of bravado common to young men caught in their rush toward manhood. All of us wanted to feel like we were brave, manly, and in control, but most of all, we didn't want to look cowardly or weak in front of our friends. It may seem adolescent and rash now, but it made perfect sense at the time and to a very large extent controlled our actions not only on this occasion, but spanned the years of our youth.
No one noticed that I was the last one out of the boat.
The dread I felt deepened with every stroke I took as I pushed away from the boat and began making my way to shore. My mind raced as I struggled to formulate a credible and graceful way out of my predicament, one which would allow me to save face with my friends, but deep down in the recesses of my soul, in a place where everything but the truth is stripped away, where we are all forced to face ourselves honestly, I knew I was going to have to jump. There was no way out of this...not this time. There simply was nothing to say and nothing to do, except jump.
I climbed slowly and resolutely toward a fate I felt powerless to control. And, when I got to the top, I jumped. Looking back on this experience with the distance and perspective that a few years provide, I am awed by the power peer pressure exerted in my life at that time. It was stronger than a fear so compelling and controlling that rational thought and even physical pain were banished by it.
This knowledge helps me understand the challenges my own children face, and motivates many of my prayers on their behalf. It's not hard to understand how the wrong friends at the wrong time in a moment of weakness could lead even the best of our children to places they never intended and would never have chosen to go in and of themselves outside the influence of this powerful force.
Have you ever stood at the edge of one of life's cliffs and felt compelled to jump even though everything inside you screamed no? Did you jump? Would you change anything now about the decisions you made then? If so, then, you are in a position where you can show compassion and understanding to others who jumped into deep waters acting in ways even they would admit were irrational when they are truly honest with you and themselves. Compassion is what is needed, and help picking up the pieces.
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