What music and skydiving have in common

Thor Heyerdahl (1914 - 2002) was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer (systematic study of people and cultures) known for sailing the raft Kon Tiki 8000 km (5000 miles) from South America across the Pacific Ocean to the Toamotu Islands.

Before this, and before he was actually interested in ethnography, he and his newly wed Liv went off to the island Fatu Hiva in the middle of the pacific. They went there to escape civilisation, and live from the earth without any contact to the world outside. They stayed on the island for one and a half years. Thor Heyerdahl and Liv eventually found out that the paradise on Earth they were looking for, didn't exist.

In one of the books he wrote about this particular expedition, he says that humans only invented music because of the need for something to give the senses the change of moods and impressions. Something that humans used to get from living in the forest and being one with nature. When we left nature to build up civilisation, the natural powers that kept us sane were lost for good.
We tried to replace it with music.

For me, skydiving does the same as music. Like walking in a forest or listening to music, skydiving sharpens my senses. Have you ever walked in a deep forest for hours or days, and then suddenly you start noticing things? Things that have always been there, but hidden to your senses only to reveal itself when your senses open up to it.
As I'm writing this blog, I'm listening to my favourite music for relaxation on repeat. After listening to it for an hour, I start noticing new instruments, passages and levels in exactly the same way.

When skydiving, you notice things about yourself and your surroundings you didn't know existed. But only if you allow yourself the peace and repetitiveness.

To open up the senses and see, hear, taste and feel what is REALLY there, you need to let go of emails, tasks at work, shopping lists and drama, and just BE. Just like you need to let go of the same things to really hear ALL of the levels of music, and all the birds in the forest.

To many skydivers, jumping becomes rutine, and we start to focus on other things. When working in the industry, in freefall your focus is sometimes to smile to the camera while taking a tandem client, sometimes about how to get time for lunch, or the DZ drama. Your senses can't hear the music, and this is a problem.
Firstly, your head is not on guard to eventual dangers, but in this post I will focus on the other problem: For most of us, skydiving is mainly about opening up senses, and if we loose that, we will slowly forget why we started to skydive.

One of the things that makes up my passion for skydiving is the passion for seeing, hearing, tasting and feeling all that is there, and just like the different layers of music will be there whether we hear it or not, our passion for skydiving is never lost, sometimes we just can't hear it.

I fell victim to this a couple of times, and it turned out the fix was right in front of me:
Go out and re-open the senses. Do some jumps where the focus is on hearing, tasting, seeing and feeling. Do a fun-jump where you forget about forcing a smile, forget about lunch and all the DZ drama, and forget about turning points. Just get out of the door with no other purpose than having fun.

Hear the music, and see the whole forest