“Uh oh”

It took less than a second to realize I had made a bad decision based on a bad plan.

I was at least seven hours from the nearest phone and I had just jumped off a cliff. Literally.

There was water at the bottom, shallow up against the base of the cliff, plenty deep out past a prominent rock shelf. The shelf was about six feet deep and my plan was to jump past it…

I hit the water traveling just under 30 miles per hour. It happened thirty years ago but I still have four distinct memories of the fall. I remember stepping off, the “uh oh”, hitting the water and lying on the rock shelf.

When I hit the water, I was looking straight ahead and sitting down with my arms to the side. Kind of like I was sitting in a lazy-boy watching TV. My landing position wasn’t a conscious choice and it wasn’t something I had practiced, but it saved my life. My brain knew what had to happen and did what it needed to do.

After lying on the shelf for a couple seconds I pushed off the bottom, swam to the shore and got out of the water without a scratch.

The jump was an irrational decision, based on inaccurate perception, to obtain an emotional experience.

The only thing that saved me was a skill I didn’t know I had.  The skill consisted of very real ‘If, Then’ links in my brain which saved me from a brief ‘what if?…’.

The jump also generated a few questions I’ve been thinking about ever since:

What are decisions? What drives behavior? What does the brain actually do?

Website Organization

People. I’m not alone in the search for answers. The “People” page has a list of some very smart people who have both informed and inspired me.

Notes. I’m posting notes on what I’m learning on the “Notes” page. The notes are the sausage making, they are far from finished products but offer a peek behind the curtain of some of the things I’m working on.