I attended a BASE jumping course in the summer of 2006, during which a particular sunrise jump was followed by a rare solitary moment with my instructor. As he drove me up a winding road toward the Perrine Bridge situated 486 feet above the Snake River in Twin Falls, Idaho, I asked him an unassuming question.
“So what’s it like living the dream?”
He gave me a strange look. “What do you mean?”
“You’re a professional BASE jumper,” I said emphatically. “What’s it like living the dream?”
His response to that query was profoundly simple:
“That depends on what your dream is.”
It struck me as an odd thing for him to say at the time. I was then 23 years old, at a point in my life when being strapped to a hospital bed, blasting heavy metal with an IV of raw adrenaline in each arm, would have been considered an optimal if not coveted use of my time.
Now, as a 34-year old husband and father, I have ample reason to consider my instructor’s words in a far different context.
My dreams have shifted shape and form over the last 19 years of my life.
When I turned 15, I was destined to become a fighter pilot. I worked several jobs to afford private pilot lessons in the hopes of soloing an aircraft before I drove a car by myself, eager to begin my aviator biography. This dream became a reality a few days after my 16th birthday, when my first solo in a two-seat Cessna 152 was cut short after I nearly crashed on the first of three planned touch-and-go landings at an airstrip in Scott County, Kentucky.
By my 19th birthday I was a newly minted Army infantryman, and wanted only to go to combat. This wish was granted within a few months when I went to Afghanistan. Upon returning to America I promptly failed the swim test for admission to Ranger School, returning to my unit a failure only to find myself on a plane to the invasion of Iraq as a result.
Age 20 brought with it the desire to conquer a previous rejection from West Point. Once I was finally accepted, I wanted to become a skydiver, and then a marathon runner. Each compulsion was a domino that would ultimately yield to the next in an endless string of territories to be explored.
The lessons from all these experiences were lost on me as I quietly boarded a flight for Boise to attend a BASE jumping course. My latest obsession with parachuting from fixed objects consumed me; my desire led me to believe it was, or at the very least should be, universal.
On and on the change in my dream continued.
After donning a Green Beret for the first time I was assured entry into a follow-on training pipeline for a company specially trained for crisis response. A negligent discharge of my firearm on the range quickly ended that option, banishing me to a staff position as I awaited a team assignment.
And while I had very simply, and very catastrophically, fucked up, I eventually landed on a team that I never otherwise would have. In hindsight, I would gladly repeat that single greatest professional failure a hundred times over to end up where I did, with the men that I did, in the places we went.
My present reality is far removed from my teenage years, and this draft of my life finds composing novels to be the most fulfilling cause I have ever known. Every facet of my intuition tells me that I will continue writing long into the golden years, having finally settled on a single course from which to pursue the endless journey to elusive mastery.
But that hasn’t been the case yet, and I’m not sure it ever will be.
Now, as a 34-year old husband and father, I have ample reason to consider my instructor’s words in a far different context.
My BASE instructor taught me that as surely as one must ruthlessly pursue their dream, there are endless definitions to what that dream may entail, and no limit to how many times it may change course over the arc of a lifetime.
But life has taught me a complementary if not far more important lesson.
And that lesson is that just as your dream can change, so can you.
Every soul-crushing defeat or dizzying victory of my career or personal life, even in their combined effect, cannot raise the slightest inkling of concern amidst the 34-year old me, patiently sitting in a dining room chair as his 2-year old daughter paints his toenails hot pink.
Rank, ribbons, and reputation mean little in the eyes of a child, and it is through this lens that I struggle to care in hindsight about either my grandest failures or successes, each of which shook my entire world at the time they occurred.
The 23-year old me that raised an eyebrow at the comment of my instructor, himself a father, wouldn’t have understood what I understand now. Maybe that’s the way it should be, because what better way to arrive at such conclusions than by invalidating the assumptions of youth?
In the end, the truth I have arrived at is this: living the dream has nothing to do with the judgment of organizations, nor of one’s ordainment under preconceived notions of title or formal accomplishment.
Living the dream is no different than living life, the latter matching the former when one’s daily reality makes every thoughtfully planned career move and personal risk inconsequential amidst the sheer importance of the present moment. Beyond the struggle to prevail over unrealized dreams, beyond the strivings and failures of life, these unexpected daily occurrences can effortlessly supersede the grandest plans of one’s past.
Jason Kasper is the author of the David Rivers Series. Read more and contact him at base1178.com.