What do Skydiving and Performing Magic have in common?

I have several passions in life. Two of them are skydiving and performing magic. These seem to be two completely opposite things: skydiving is jumping out a plane with your friends for a thrill and performing magic is sharing a trick with someone to give them a sense of wonder and joy.

Around thirty years ago, I was in my height of skydiving. I was making hundreds of skydives per year. Most importantly, I was working as a skydiving instructor doing tandem skydives to pay my way through college. What a great way to pay for school! I got to skydive and be able to afford tuition.

Taking someone on a tandem skydive was an amazing and very personal experience. Most people come to make a tandem skydive are doing it only once. It’s a bucket list thing to do. But, it’s also a very significant and memorable thing for anybody to jump out of a plane over two miles up. I was the person harnessed to them entrusted to give them that once-in-a-lifetime experience. I was there to share their joy.

There was actually a problem with this really cool job. No matter how cool something is, once you do it enough, a job is a job. I loved tandem skydives, but at the end of a long , hot week in the summer I may have made fifty skydives. Sometimes, I was okay if I didn’t make that last jump in the afternoon.

However, for every person that climbed in to that plane with me, it was their special experience. I cared deeply that they got to safely enjoy what I was so passionate about, even if it felt like Groundhog’s Day to me.

So how does this relate to me performing magic? I have seen tons of magic. I watch other magicians perform. I watch videos. I read books. I have a steady diet of magic in my life. I often ask people if they have ever seen a magician live. Similar to most people never jumping out of a plane before, most people have never seen a magician live. Even fewer have seen close-up magic where the magic happens in their hands with the magician in front of them.

This is where, for me, skydiving and magic have something in common. No matter how many times I’ve done a magic trick, the person in front of me has probably never had magic happen in their hands. I want them to experience that sense of wonder and joy, even if I have seen the magic fifty times this week.