The canopy opened above me, and I felt a peace I’d never felt before.
Until that moment, I was terrified. I was afraid of heights and had signed up for a solo static-line jump to try to get over it. Decades later, I’m still glad I did it. (P.S. It didn’t work, it’s still an issue for me.)
As I remember it, jump school lasted just four hours. Then they loaded us onto a small plane with a gaping hole in its side. Along for the flight were a bunch of young, feisty, “oo-rah” off-duty Marines. We flew to 3,000 feet, and suddenly every single one of the guys in front of me had an expression on his face like he was five years old and had lost his momma at the mall.
I’m sure I had the same expression.
My legs dangled outside the plane as I thought, What the *@#% am I doing?!? But out the side I went.
Until the parachute opened fully, I remember saying, repeatedly and rapid-fire, Oh my God, please don’t let me die, as I mentally hyperventilated, remembered my instructions, and tugged at the steering handles, as the instructor taught, to help the canopy inflate faster.
And then, drifting above the ground, absolutely no sound other than the wind in my ears. Incredible.
I landed gracefully, grabbed another ‘chute, went up, and did it again. This time I was so enthralled I drifted over a lake, thought Oh sh!t, and found my way back to the landing area.
I made those jumps in December 1985, during my Navy years. I’d enlisted at 23 after dropping out of college twice and working jobs that weren’t taking me anywhere. I was a fry cook at Bennigan’s when a coworker told me he’d joined the Navy. About a week later, I walked into a recruiting office. Boot camp at Great Lakes and a posting to San Diego got me out of New Jersey for good.
The choices I'm proudest of in my life are the ones where I had an easy option but took the hard one.
The lift I gave up
At 64, a different hard choice was waiting for me. A woman who’d spent decades teaching the Schroth method for scoliosis put an X-ray of my spine into software that reconstructed it in 3D. I saw the curvature and rotation of my spine and the long screws from the fusion at its base.
I retired the deadlift that day. Barbell squats went the same week.
I’d liked being the man who could still pull heavy weight from the floor. Giving that up felt like surrender. A year earlier, I’d torn a tendon in my right shoulder beyond repair trying bench press heavy. I had a new perspective on what my spine looked like now, and I couldn’t keep treating the deadlift as a test of who I was.
Hip thrusts replaced the heavy pulls. Seated leg press replaced squats, and my numbers kept climbing.
The jump asked me to go through fear. The deadlift asked me to let go of something my ego wanted to keep. I’m proud of both choices now because I made them for reasons that still hold up.
Your version might be a conversation you’ve rehearsed but haven’t had. A workout you’ve postponed for six months. A habit you keep defending because changing it would force you to admit how long it’s owned you. A move you need to make. An apology that loses its value every time you add the word “but.”
Some of those are fear. Some are ego. Either way, the hard choice is the one you keep arguing yourself out of.
The hard things that took years
Some choices require more than one tough afternoon. In 2011, Google’s Panda update crushed my website Game Rant’s traffic. I found roughly 1,000 articles under 250 words on a site where I’d set a 500-word minimum. The editor had ignored the standard, and I’d trusted him without checking the work. Both facts were true, but I was the owner.
It took about two years for the site to recover. I eventually sold Game Rant and Screen Rant, which I’d started in 2003. I’m proud I stayed with the site and rebuilt the traffic after admitting my part in the failure.
Starting over at 59 took a different kind of endurance. My marriage ended after 24 years. I lived in a rented duplex and learned to cook from YouTube. Then I moved to Puerto Rico. For a while, the new place helped. By my final months in San Juan, the group I’d spent time with had thinned out. I was sitting alone in my apartment with bourbon and no one to hang out with.
I moved to Nashville and became a 60-year-old roommate. The moves were hard. Facing myself and what I needed to change was harder.
I had to own my part in my previous marriage and face what the drinking had been medicating since the divorce. I had to learn to be alone without treating it as proof that I was unwanted. My faith had to exist on Monday as much as it did on Sunday.
I’d read my Bible every morning and tried to pray, and I couldn’t see it changing me. Then I met the woman who’d become my wife, and she showed me what faith looks like lived out.
I’m married to Mai now, and I sit with men I trust every week. I’m prouder of the last couple of years than of anything I did when I was supposed to be at my peak.
A reason worth the cost
I’ve made hard choices that were also bad choices. Stubbornness can feel like courage, and a man can congratulate himself for enduring something he should have left. The reason should justify the cost.
And keep in mind that pride needs watching, too. I know what these choices cost me and I can be proud of them without ranking myself above another man whose hard choices I know nothing about. Be on guard for hubris from your accomplishments.
But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor.
Galatians 6:4 (ESV)
Make the hard choice. More often than not, you'll look back years later and be glad you did.
Vic built and sold ScreenRant.com and GameRant.com, then rebuilt himself in his sixties.
He writes at TheRedeemedSecondHalf.com for men rebuilding the second half of life.