WHY WE SKYDIVE

Why we skydive: Documentary

In this really well made video, some of the world’s best skydivers answer one simple question, “Why do you skydive?”

Transcript

Speaker 1: Skydiving to me is, I guess, basically, I guess peaceful is the best way to describe it.

Speaker 2: Skydiving for me is something that’s really part of my life. Almost any time I spend a little bit too long without skydiving, being that a week or two weeks, it feels strange. It feels that I’m missing something.

Speaker 3: It’s the only true moment that you have to be actually 100% on the moment. It’s when you have to be right there for that second because everything depends on that second. You cannot be thinking about what you’re going to do tomorrow and what happened yesterday.

Speaker 2: Since I was a kid, I always would like to jump from big things to the water and stuff like that. Then I saw skydiving a couple of times and I always thought that it was something that I wanted to do, although I never really saw the way of making it possible. But then once I was 18, I had a few friends that had just started to skydive. They told me about it and I was, “Oh great. Let’s go check it out,” and went up, did my first skydive. Even though I had a horrible landing, got all scraped up on the knees, I just wanted to go back up right away for some reason.

At the beginning, it was like for that factor of like, “Oh, I’m falling down!” I’m like, “Oh, I am daring my life and everything,” but then, as I learned more from the sport I realized how intricate it was and how many things there was into it. You start learning how to fly your body and how to move with it, and how to move around in different ways so it becomes almost like as any sport and you just want to get better. It’s just a great feeling of accomplishment, of being able to actually see yourself flying, getting closer to one person when you want, or farther, going up with respect to the other person, or down, and just flying in groups like if you were like birds or airplane formations, or that kind of thing. So it’s a super fun feeling. That’s why I keep doing it.

Speaker 4: Skydiving, for me, if I summarized it in three words, I got to say speed, space, and freedom. Those are the three main things that I can see and I can relate essentially to. I don’t know how to say why I keep doing it, but it’s just living as the only, and the only feeling I ever done that, I am in the moment the most. There’s nothing else that matters, literally, and there’s nothing else that can matter when you’re doing or you’re assimilating so many things and so much freedom and so much space and so much speed. So that’s the main thing for me. I don’t know how to say why I’m not going to do if forever, but I know it’s going to be the biggest part of my life for a very long time.

Speaker 3: Doing the whole day, I’m not really like, “Oh my god, I’m going to go skydiving,” or “I don’t want to go skydiving.” It’s like when I’m at the drop zone just life takes you to the drop zone. Then when I’m in the plane I’m goofing around, but at the moment it’s the edge of the door … Most people talk about having the edge of a cliff or whatever, base jumping, but just being at that door in that moment … I can tell you pretty much every jump that I’ve done, it’s just that split second before you say, “Go,” because everything is fine, everything is great, and then you’re just right at the door. At that moment you’re just, “If this was the last one, is this the right one?” The answer is always yes. I will jump pretty much until the day that I die. It just feels amazing.

Speaker 4: You get out of the real thing because if you think, hey, I’m falling off the plane, you literally think what’s happening, you couldn’t do the things that we do up there. So it’s a switch, it’s a mind switch where you go out and fly for a few seconds.

Speaker 2: It’s just a feeling of being flying, like some place that, as humans, we’re not even supposed to be there. Just being in the sky and being able to control your body and go where you want and just really flying, because you’re not falling, you’re in complete control. So that part feels like, flying the parachute down, that it’s also an amazing experience. It’s very accomplishing and something that fills me up a lot, something that I think everyone should try.

Speaker 5: I’ve been asked this question a lot of times, like, “Why do you jump out airplanes?” I lost my father to a skydiving accident and people are so floored that they’re like, “I can’t believe you still jump.” I’m like, “You know what …” My rebuttal to that is, “When was the last time you felt alive?” Is really going to your cubicle and working a nine-hour shift really, does that make you feel good? Is going to the bar and getting drunk, does that make you feel alive? I can say I feel alive every single day that I’m jumping out of airplanes. It’s a part of me. I’ve been jumping since I was four years old. I need it.

When my father died it’s like, “Isn’t that tragic,” and I’m like, “You know, it’s tragic to get killed by a drunk driver. It’s tragic to have died plugged to a machine. If you’re doing something you truly love, that is part of you, is that truly tragic?” I’ll jump, hopefully, and I don’t have a death wish by any means. I’m as safe as possible and I preach safety. I think skydiving is similar to crossing a street. If you just run across the street it’s pretty foolish, but if you walk up to the edge of the street, you look left and you look right before you cross, it could be a really, really safe sport.

It’s really hard to explain what skydiving feels like. It’s the reason why we say try it once. You may never want to do it again, and I’ve seen people land from a jump saying, “That was awesome. I’ll never do it again.” But at least they’re not hypocritical. They’ve experienced that. You can say it’s like being in the pool or it’s like floating on a Tempur-Pedic bed, but it really is its own animal in itself, and to truly experience it you have to do it.

Speaker 1: Skydiving to me is, I guess basically, I guess peaceful is the best way to describe it. If I have a bad day and I’m upset about something, the one thing that I can always count on is that when I leave an aircraft, the instant I leave the door of the aircraft, all of that is gone and I’m stuck in that 60-second moment in time, and it’s never failed me. It’s always been fun. I’ve never been upset in free fall. I’ve always been happy, so free fall is happiness to me.