The man in front of me stepped toward the edge, looked down at the river and stepped back.
We were near the end of a group trip in Korea. The morning had been whitewater rafting, splashing each other and messing around like people do when a bus full of strangers has temporarily decided to become friends. Then we reached the bungee-jumping platform.
It overlooked a huge river. One by one, people were attached to the cord and sent over the edge. The line moved slowly, which made everything worse because waiting gives fear time to grow. One of the biggest men on the trip had dipped into the water during his jump. He came back saying it was fine. Seeing him hit the water did not make it look fine.
The man ahead of me was one of four Indian guys I had met on the bus. We had connected quickly. I had not met many non-Western foreigners in Korea, so there was an immediate recognition between us. They saw me. I saw them. You're from Saudi? Oh my God. Okay. Done. We were friends for the day.
Now one of them was at the edge, reconsidering every decision that had brought him there.
I was directly behind him, and the encouraging voice came out of me immediately. I remember saying something like, “No, man, do it. Don't be afraid. You're going to regret not jumping. Come on, man. It's going to be okay. You can make this jump. You can do it.”
His shoulders went up. He took a deep breath, stepped forward and jumped.
I cheered as he fell. At the bottom, a boat took him to shore so he could make his way back up. He was still down there when the people running the jump turned to me.
Then it was my turn.
I walked to the edge and looked down.
Nope. No way.
The confidence I had offered him a few seconds earlier was nowhere to be found. People were around, but there was no equivalent voice behind me, nobody close enough to interrupt what the river was telling me. I took off the equipment and walked away.
“No, no, guys, it's okay,” I remember saying. “I can live without doing this. I've been skydiving before. I got my thrills.”
This was a very convenient time to remember that I had already been brave somewhere else.
When the man came back up the hill, he asked how my jump had gone.
“What, are you crazy?” I said. “Only crazy people jump.”
He looked confused. “You didn't jump?”
“No.”
He did not laugh. He felt bad for me, which was funny and sweet at the same time. Then he said something I still remember: “It's hard to jump when you're the last one.”
I told him it had definitely been hard not to have someone behind me helping to push me forward.
He thanked me. He was grateful that I had helped him do it even though I had not done it myself.
From one step behind
I had enough to encourage him and not enough to jump myself.
From one step behind him, the jump looked possible, and I believed everything I said.
Then I stood where he had been standing, and the same words no longer sounded convincing.
I did not make his jump happen. He took the breath, moved his feet and went over the edge. My encouragement did not remove the fear or do the difficult part for him. Still, he had stepped back, somebody behind him told him he could do it, and then he moved.
Maybe I would have walked away even if he had been standing behind me. I cannot know what would have happened. What I know is that he had received the push I could give, while the person I had just encouraged was still below when my turn came. For a moment, courage did not feel as private as I had imagined.
Becoming capable alone
Korea had already been teaching me how much I could do by myself.
When I first arrived, I lived alone in a small officetel with almost no furniture. The sleeping area had such a low ceiling that I had to move around on my knees. Some days had so much empty time that I turned buying clothes hangers into an activity. I would walk to the department store, buy one hanger, return home, put it away and eventually go out for another one.
Efficiency was not the point. I was trying to pass an hour and make the room feel slightly less empty.
Over time, I learned the city. I learned how to work, travel and find people. By the time of the rafting trip, I could move through Korea without constantly feeling as if I had just been dropped there.
That year made me more capable on my own. Looking back, I can also see the limit of treating that capability as self-sufficiency. Learning to manage alone did not mean I could produce everything I needed alone.
Sometimes we know how to speak to another person's fear better than we know how to speak to our own. We can see their strength from one step behind them. Then our turn comes, and the same advice sounds very different from inside the fear.
To me, that does not make the encouragement false or the person giving it a hypocrite. The other person still has to move. But the voice beside them may make courage easier to find.
I did not jump that day. He did.
When he came back, he did not make me feel smaller for walking away. He simply thanked me. We had known each other for only a few hours, but his gratitude showed me that my refusal did not erase whatever my voice had given him.
That is the strange fact I carried away from the platform: sometimes you can lend someone courage and still not have enough for yourself.
