Have you ever been skydiving? When I went skydiving, the thing that I was most struck by (after I got over the crazy thrill of falling from the sky) wasn’t the activity itself but the realization I had after it.
You’d think that as your feet dangle off the floor of the plane, you’d realize how high up you are, but surprisingly, that’s not really the case. They say that the optimal height to maximize a fear of heights is around 40 feet or so, after which the height becomes abstract. Any lower and you think you might make it. Any higher and it becomes difficult to conceptualize of how high it really is. I know this because as a high schooler I once found myself standing on the very top of a telephone pole during one of those ropes courses (don’t worry, I had a harness on) with a surprisingly distant person on the ground telling me to jump off. I did (belayed by the rope attached to my harness) and I can confirm: that is the scariest height.
As a quick aside, there’s some interesting research done on how our outlook affects our perception of environments like this, including on those with actual acrophobia (which I’m not addressing here).
But skydiving is so different. It’s scary in its own way; more worrying than scary maybe. But after you’ve fallen—almost flown—through the air, all 15,000 feet of it (the highest you can go without needing oxygen), and you’re back on the ground, you all of the sudden intuitively realize how high the sky really is. You’ve been up there, not in some metal box, looking out through a tiny window, but actually been there, completely immersed and present. Your conception of how much air is above you has changed forever, and to this day, I still think of the sky differently.
Ever stop to think how high up your ceiling of awareness is? Even though you’re not actively thinking about it, your subconscious has an idea of how much space is above you. For most people, that ceiling is no higher than the trees and buildings near them. But for me, having flown like a bird, I think I’ll always think of my environment like one. I’m temporarily on the ground but intensely aware of my physical location in vertical space. And I’m looking forward to seeing how this changes even more as I skydive more—I’m hoping to be able to get my USPA A-license sometime soon.
For now, most of my exploration is done in the sea (of this type that is—I love traveling on land too of course, but this is a different type of exploration).
Scuba diving works the same way. I’m now a certified Rescue Diver (with PADI) and intending to reach my Master Diver rating soon, and over the years of diving one of the things that’s stuck with me the most has been how differently I think about water, or more accurately, the concept of the surface. It’s something that’s occurred to me in discussions with non-diver friends as we’re standing by a lake or the ocean. For them, it’s a view, or maybe even a place to swim or a medium for boating. But they’re creatures of the land, and just as they don’t understand the sky, they don’t fully understand what’s below the surface. They live a life with a distinct ceiling and a floor and constant access to the surface air and land they live in.
There’s a strange irony at play here when you consider how people think of these environments. A life lived exclusively on the surface is a life that is ordered by the concepts of “up” and “down”, yet such a life is also one that is almost entirely unaware of what these concepts fully mean.
Conversely, to fully experience the sky and the sub-surface, underwater world is to be intensely aware of these concepts, and yet simultaneously and uniquely free of them. In the sky and underwater, you can fly or suspend in neutral buoyancy in any attitude/orientation—headfirst, facing up, facing down, etc. It’s a free experience where up and down are both more deeply known and yet simultaneously and perhaps counterintuitively, less relevant than ever.
Nowhere is this concept more apparent than in space. Having fully experienced the maximal value of “up”, one discovers (I’m told) how absurd and localized such a concept really is. In constant freefall in orbit, one masters the illusion of proprioception in an environment defined exclusively in relative terms.
It’s my life dream to go to space some day.
To scuba dive, skydive, or even go to space is to commit to attempt to explore the universe without physical limits. Of course, we’re always limited by the physical aspects of our bodies. We can’t stay underwater without technology, or stay underwater forever, or go as deep as we might like, just as we can’t truly fly without technology (and even then for a limited time). But these activities provide a window into what it would be like to truly explore without limits, and that’s enough to inspire the truly limitless exploration that comes with this new way of conceiving of the world and the very concept of dimensionality.
And you get to experience some incredible things along the way too, from smelling what clouds smell like and seeing the curvature of the earth first hand, to swimming with sharks or getting your hand cleaned by fish in a reef cleaning station that won’t do it unless you wait your turn in line in a place that few others have ever seen in the largest ecosystem on earth.
People are surprised to discover that when you dive beneath the surface of the water they perceive as a floor, it often feels like you’re entering a large room from the ceiling, especially with good visibility. Your perception of “up” is still there, but your idea of a floor changes from the surface to the sea floor instead.
When you look up at the surface, you can see the boat (just as you see the plane as you flip on just after jumping in skydiving) and maybe even some rain on the surface.
To adapt Carl Sagan’s famous speech, “everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of,” is living or has lived pretty much exclusively up on the surface you’re leaving behind. “That’s home.”
And below you is an alien world. It’s no exaggeration to say that in many cases, you’re the first person to have ever been in that spot. Scientists estimate that up to two thirds of all the life in the ocean is still undiscovered. In many ways, we literally know more about other planets than we do about our own oceans. In this context, divers are like astronauts, on the true frontier of exploration.
And besides life, there’s history and culture to be discovered. Rather than in a museum behind glass, these pieces of history are in their actual, real-world environments and you’re free to explore. I’m fortunate to have gone diving at a few shipwrecks, some over a hundred feet deep. In this context, you’re an archeologist, one of the few people to have been on the ship since it sank in WWII.
There are even underwater contemporary art installations.
These activities, like all exploration on the frontier, are also inherently technical and they involve some risk. Given that they’re in somewhat hostile environments, you have to train to explore them safely and rely on your fellow explorers. The environments can be unforgiving—few things are more intensely exhausting than a day spent immersed in water.
But like all creatures, you adapt, and it’s this adaptation that is one of exploration’s greatest rewards. The sea and the sky develop confidence, trust, and calm in the face of stress.
These are places that we all live right next to, but very few of us actually venture into them and commit to a life lived with them and in them rather than just next to them.
Once you venture into them, you discover how high the sky goes (it’s higher than you might think) and how deep the ocean goes, particularly when you float on the edge of a continental shelf, looking out into thousands of miles of deep ocean.
“The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”
— JACQUES YVES COUSTEAU, OCEANOGRAPHER + DIVING PIONEER
A life in water, from little ponds to the ocean, and in the sky, is, to me, a life more fully lived. Looking at it is incredible, but it’s an interaction had at a distance. There’s a small degree to which one is always a tourist, seeing only those parts that are most accessible and engaging with them from a place of safety and familiarity. But to be within it is to live there as a local and to accept how it will change you and the associated risk and reward.
To the next frontier. Happy exploring.
Please don’t attempt these activities without training.
