IDEAS

My family and I enjoyed our holiday in Croatia and that's when I realized that we need to pause every now and then, in order to take care of ourselves, relationship and family.

It was our last day, and my husband Boris decided that he wanted to jump off a diving board that went off a cliff into the sea. My guess was that it was 5 meters high, but our friend said it's about 3 meters. I guess height is relative like time. To both Boris and me it seemed like 5 meters or more. I was quite surprised that Boris wanted to jump, but I got excited for him. He went up, and stood there for a while. Then he sat down and waited for a bit. There was a boy, who jumped down with ease, and he tried to help. He said "I can push you if you want..." Boris laughed. He stood up again and looked down. He sat down again and waited. This went on and on for about an hour. Then he came down and said: " I can't do it." It was ok for all of us, and we went back to swimming and enjoying the sun.

The children started to be hungry and it was about time for us to go home, so we packed our stuff and were ready to go. Boris looked back to the diving board and said: "Should I do it?" I told him that if he wanted, of course he should do it, but he rather be fast this time as it was getting late. He thought for a while, then he said: "Ok, I will try." And he went up again. It was the same thing as before. He went up, looked down, sat, tried to jump, went back a little, sat down again and waited. There were so many moments when we thought he would jump, so we all just kept watching him, scared to miss the moment he would do it. The sun went down. It got colder and the children kept telling me that they were hungry. Almost two hours had passed like this.

I was getting annoyed and angry that Boris didn't even think about us? After all we still had to pack since we were leaving the next day. I considered just leaving with the children and waving him goodbye. Then suddenly an idea came to my head. And seriously, I keep wondering where ideas are coming from... I had this image of myself going up there, taking Boris' hand and we would jump together. "Wow, that would be really amazing" I thought.

Then I made a reality check. It was cold, the sun was gone and I didn't even want to go into the water anymore. Besides the diving board was really high. What if I freaked out up there? I pushed the idea away, as tempting as it was. No, I better not do that. And I started playing with the children, talking to the friends and getting busy. Then I thought I can just go up and talk to him for a bit. So I went up and when I looked at him, I saw how scared he was. I looked down to see if I would freak out, and somehow it seemed fine. Because Boris was so scared, I had the feeling that my fear was less than his and I could do it. Fear must be relative, like time and height. I told him: " Come on, let's jump together." He was totally surprised and told me that I was already dressed and it would be crazy. Anyways he wasn't able to do it. "Maybe you can't do it, but we can do it together. I still have my swim clothes on, I take off my shoes and I'm ready." I was surprised about how fearless I was. I got ready, took his hand and in my imagination we were already jumping down together, when he said: "No, I cannot do it. I am so scared that I will do something stupid and because we jump together you will get hurt. I will jump first, and then you jump after." "No problem" I said, "let's do it like this." I stepped a little bit back and waited for him to jump. And then he did it. He jumped.

Everybody was clapping and screaming out of joy. Then I jumped as well. Back down and all dressed, he told me that as a child, he had jumped off a diving board and it had hit his back really bad. So his biggest fear was that the board would hit his back again. And there it was again. The spark of our relationship, and we were so grateful for this moment. For each other. For our beautiful family.

I wonder what had happened if I had just walked away. Sometimes it's so easy, and yet I wonder: Where do ideas come from?