As my forty-fifth birthday was approaching, my wife asked me what I would like for a present. Like many of us, I am pretty sick of owning a lot of stuff, clutter that eventually finds its way up to the attic, and so I didn't want to get a physical object. Instead, I asked her if she could give me one of those experiences I wanted to try at least once in life. In this case, it was skydiving. She organized the whole thing, and, on a sunny late-summer Sunday morning, we found ourselves at a little airport an hour's drive from our house. I met the instructor to whose belly I would be strapped, and he explained what would happen from when we climbed into the back of the plane with one other tandem team and four solo jumpers, all the way to touching down again on a patch of grass next to the hangar. Then it all started, and the main feeling I was experiencing was one of complete terror, even though I knew, intellectually, that everything would be fine. Sitting in the plane next to a curtain covering the opening through which I was destined to exit once we had reached the appropriate altitude, I tried to distract myself from my fear by asking the instructor lots of questions. Then we got there, the curtain was opened, the solo jumpers tumbled out without hesitation, and the other tandem team took a few moments to exit as well. The state of fear continued as my instructor slid us to the opening, and I sat there, my legs dangling out, and my feet resting against a metal bar that I couldn't see. Then he pushed us, we tumbled once, I caught a glimpse of the airplane receding into the sky, and then we stabilized, looking down with arms and legs splayed out. At that moment, everything changed. All fear vanished. It felt like we were suspended motionless in the sky and could stay that way forever.