Dating : 03/ The jump

A couple of weeks before the wedding, John had an important conversation with his oldest son. Sometimes when John said things out loud, he felt the power of words. He felt like the words he was choosing to say out loud would have consequences. Like somebody was listening and taking these words as assignments. Like he was expressing wishes to a higher power. This was also the case in this talk with his son. His son fell in love with a girl. And he wanted to ask her if she felt the same and he wanted to be his girlfriend. All pretty normal stuff. What was not so normal is that his whole class got involved in this somehow. Him asking her became a class project. He had told friends how he felt. They told other people. And word got to the girl. She passed a message back to him that he could ask her on a specific date. That date was two weeks in the future. She had just broken up with another boy and wanted a buffer. These two weeks of waiting were excruciating for his son. The uncertainty was killing him. All his classmates started to have opinions about whether she would say yes or no. Two groups formed. One group who thought she would say yes and the other group who thought no. His classmates were also giving advice to the girl on whether to say yes or no. It was a shit storm. He talked to his son almost every night to calm him down. When the time came to ask the question, things got even harder. He wasn’t going to get the opportunity to ask her in private. When the time came, the whole class was there. He had to ask her in front of the whole class. Talk about pressure. But he did not back away from this challenge. He asked her and she said yes. When he told John how he faced up to this challenge, John was so proud of him.

To tell him how proud he was, how incredibly strong he had been, he decided to tell him his own history with telling girls he loved them. He told him he was too afraid. He told him he was already stronger than him. When John was young and he had fallen in love with a girl, he had always been to scared to tell them. This prevented him from knowing whether these feelings were mutual. This blocked him from the possibility to have relationships with these girls. It could be that none of the girls he fell in love with felt the same about him. But he never knew. He was never in the game. Those moments of potential never had a chance to materialize into something. Eventually he met a girl and things flowed naturally into a relationship. This girl became his wife and they had been together for almost twenty-five years now. But still, John felt a pain in his heart from all those missed opportunities. Just because he was too scared. Too afraid of rejection. John told his son that he had few regrets in his life. But this was definitely one thing he regretted. He regretted not having the courage to open up to the girls he had fallen in love with in his life. If he could do his life over, this was one thing he would try to change. He was happy with where he was. He was just curious where he would have been if hadn’t been such a coward. The moment John spoke these words to his son, he felt this was a meaningful moment. For his son. But maybe even more for himself. He had thought these thoughts many times in his head. But now that he spoke them out loud, he felt the weight of these words. He felt he was not just speaking these words to his son but also to something else, to a higher power. He had just openly stated his biggest fear. It was a social fear. The fear of telling girls he was in love was just the tip of the iceberg. The social fear was bigger than that. The fear of rejection was not just with girls. It was with all people to some degree. Fear of rejection guided his choices in life. It determined his life. It limited his life.

Apparently, the universe was listening when John told his son about his biggest regret, his biggest fear. Four weeks after he spoke these words to his son, the universe granted him a second chance. Many years after the last time he fell in love and failed to tell the girl it concerned, he fell in love again. He fell hard for miss Fire and Ice. So. What was he to do? Was he going to grab this opportunity the universe had given him and face his biggest fear? Should he tell her how he felt? This time the stakes were higher than ever in his life. He had so much to lose now. When he was young and he was in love, the only thing he could lose was his face. Now he had a wife, kids, a house, a dog. Was he willing to risk losing all that? If he told her he was in love with her, he had no idea what would happen. He had an idea of what he could lose. Regardless of how she would react, telling her would cause a shift in his life, in his relationship with his wife. There was no way he could hide this from his wife. It would also cause a shift in the relationship with miss Fire and Ice. They were colleagues and had to work together. This information would impact their work relationship. All sorts of things could shift. He actually had no idea what lay on the other side of telling her. He thought of possible consequences but realized that there was no way he could think of what would happen exactly if he told her. It was a black hole.

So, after John figured that these strange feelings he felt were feelings of being in love, the next step was to answer the question whether he should tell her or not. The universe brought her to him so he turned to the universe for an answer. He literally asked the universe whether he should tell her or not. He had no way to assess the consequences and he couldn’t figure this out by himself. So he asked the universe for a sign. And that he got. Every day he saw signs around him telling him yes, yes, yes. He saw bumper stickers. He got intuitions. He even did tests like: if this unlikely thing happens now, I should tell her. And these unlikely things happened. When he saw a deer on an evening walk, he saw it as a sign. He saw signs everywhere.

So after two weeks or so, John got convinced that the universe wanted him to tell her. And he decided to trust the universe. He decided he would follow his intuition and do exactly what the universe asked of him.

But there was another thing. What if she felt the same way? What if she wanted to explore this as much as he did? Then he should be willing to give up everything. He should be willing to put his current relationship with his wife on the line. John felt he owed that to her. If she felt the same and he would back off, he would create unnecessary pain for her. Then it would be better to not tell her. If he told her, he should be willing to let go of everything he had now. So the next question was whether John was willing to give up everything? He thought long and hard about it and his answer was yes. He was willing to risk everything. Go big or go home.

John liked change. He liked radical change. One of his most radical changes was when he finished university. He had earned a good degree from a top university but he felt something was missing. He felt the rational world view of the engineer was just one half of the truth. So he decided to explore the other half and go to art school. Most people thought he was crazy. Why throw away a perfectly good diploma and the chances to get a good job and a comfortable life as an engineer for a life of uncertainty as an artist? He had no idea what he was getting into but he felt this was something he needed to do. He never regretted it. It took him a decade to find a job in which he could connect both worlds. But now that he did, he was exactly where he was supposed to be. He did it because he knew nothing about art. In his family there we no artists. It was a world he knew nothing about. Absolutely nothing. It was the area where the learning opportunities were the biggest. And this fascinated him. He loved radical change like this.

He also saw her as the type of radical change he craved in this moment in his life. Leaving everything behind for her was such a stupid idea that he loved it. She was also so different from him. Not only was she much younger and therefore from a different generation but her ideas were so totally different than his. He was so fascinated by her thoughts and ideas. He did not understand them. But this only made them more fascinating. The learning experience would be so big with her. The prospect exited him far more than it held him back. He was so in need for a radical change. It was time.

So he took the jump.

He decided to fully trust the universe. In case she felt the same, he was ready for a radical change. If necessary, he was willing to give up everything. If not, at least he could confront his biggest fear.

John knew he was going to remember this day. When he woke up that morning, he knew this was going to be a do-or-die type of day. Sometimes, when he looked back at his life, he could identify moments when he made decisions that determined the course of his life. When he played back the movie of his life in his head, he could clearly see those moments. He could see the choices he made and how the ripple effects played out in his life. Most of these moments were about failing to chose for him, failing to stand up for what he wanted in life. The string of key moments in his life until the present moment was woven of fear. His life was great. He had everything anyone could hope for. As it turned out, fear was not such a bad guide in his life. Among other things, it led him to a wonderful life outside the mainstream. His fear turned him into an outsider. He had been able to leverage his outsider perspective. It took him to a lot of places most people don’t visit. He used it to grow into a highly skilled consultant. He learned that in a world of insiders, outsiders can provide great value. Leveraging his outsider perspective took a lot of effort. It took him years to turn it into a valuable asset. But now it was the foundation of his added value. The fear helped John. It helped him to become what he had become. Fear in certain areas made him fearless in others. The upside of becoming an outsider is that you don’t have to care anymore what other people think. This creates an enormous freedom to become fearless in a lot of areas. Lots of people fear being weird and this limits them. John did not have that. He was already weird so people expected him to do weird stuff and say weird things. The fear that shaped John was a social fear. A fear of rejection. But now John felt he had leveraged the hell out of being an outsider and he no longer needed this fear. So he decided to say goodbye to it. He thanked the fear for its many years of service. He told it its services were no longer needed.

But the fear was not so easily dismissed. You don’t just tell it to leave and then it leaves. John had to do something, take action. He needed help. He needed her. Or at least, he could use her, or more specifically he could use the fact that he was in love with her. His biggest fear was to face the rejection when expressing your love to another being. This was at the core of his social fear. This was the apex of his social fear. If he could conquer the fear of rejection by a girl he loved, he could conquer any social fear. All other social fears are far smaller than the ultimate rejection by a girl you are in love with. This is the most intimate of desires. This is the hardest rejection to take in. At least for John.

He did not expect anything. He expected her to thank him for the compliment and move on. That was the worst that could happen. Or was it? He did not really consider the option of her having the same feelings. The gap between them and the whole situation seemed to impossible for that. His primary thought was about conquering his fear. He had no idea of what would happen if he jumped off this cliff so he didn’t think through all the consequences that much. He couldn’t. His mind literally couldn’t think about anything but facing his fear. There was just one thing on his mind. The universe gave him the opportunity to get over his fear, and he was going to grab it with both hands. He did not want to live in a world where he was governed by fear anymore.

John planned a meeting with her outside the office. He did not want to have this conversation with her at the office with the chance of colleagues walking in. He pretended to want to talk to her about a work thing. It would be strange to put a private meeting in the office calendar. He made up an excuse that he had a meeting outside the office and that if she could come to him that would save him travel time. She accepted the meeting. He planned a meeting of an hour. When she arrived, he started talking about small stuff, not really project related. He had to build up a runway to take the jump. This was harder than he thought. He had to bend the conversation in a direction that would allow him to tell her what he wanted to tell her. He was nervous. He made the conversation more and more personal. But time was ticking away. He looked at his watch. Every time he looked at it, he saw that he had less time to make the jump. He was determined to tell her. He was not going to walk away from this without facing his fear. There was no way in hell. He was not going back to that. He knew what that world looked like and he was tired of it.

Fifty two minutes into the conversation John managed to tell he how he felt. Pfew. Close. He told her about the conversation he had with his son as the final step to get to where he wanted to go. He took a deep breath and spoke the words he needed to speak. He told her he was in love with her. At first she was not sure she heard him right so he had to say it again. It was out. He did not want to there to be any doubt about his message. He conquered his biggest fear. A huge burden fell from his shoulders. He was free. He knew that after this, he could face any social fear. He knew he was never going to be afraid of social rejection ever again. The social fear could finally leave him. He used acting on his feelings for her as the action needed to rid himself of it. To change things, John felt he needed action. This was action. He felt strong, powerful.

She did not say okay, thank you for the compliment, I don’t feel the same so let’s just move on. Her only reaction was surprise. She said she didn’t see this coming. The only feeling she shared was surprise. That’s it. He told her about overcoming his fear and she congratulated him on overcoming it. But other than that, John learned nothing from her. He had no idea how she felt about him. Maybe she had to think about it? Maybe the surprise was too big for her to react? Maybe she was undecided? She hesitated. There was no yes or no. Only hesitation.

The hour had passed. The meeting was over and they both had to go to different meetings after this. When they said goodbye, there was no follow up planned. She just left. She left him feeling strong and confused. He felt strong because the conquered his fear like he planned. But he felt confused by her reaction. It was not like she threw herself in his arms. But she also did not reject him.