Challenge by Choice

One thing I learned while I was recently in Costa Rica is that ziplining originated there. A scientist who studied life in the tops of the trees (the “canopy level”) in the rain forest of Sarapiqui faced a lot of time, effort, and danger climbing up and down trees to collect information for his research. Then he had the bright idea of stringing ropes between the trees and using pulleys to traverse the canopy without returning to the ground. An entrepreneur in nearby Monteverde had the bright idea to zip through the trees for fun, and an industry was born.

Ziplining was not on our official tour schedule, but we had a free afternoon at the Paraiso Hotel near the Arenal volcano, and they had an eleven-course zipline on the property. As people began talking about what they might do that afternoon (soaking in volcanically heated hot springs was another popular option), a few of us women began to talk about ziplining.

I had never ziplined before this trip. I’ve been curious about it, but the opportunity hadn’t risen in a way that felt right to me. This time, in some deep, gut-level sense, I felt ready. I wasn’t concerned about the height, or the safety, despite the fact that we’d be flying along metal lines through the trees. I knew that it was time to do it (and yes, the picture above is of me happily heading into the trees).

Luis, our guide, had a phrase about participation in aspects of the program: challenge by choice. He invited us to challenge ourselves with experiences that might be new to us, but he also stated firmly that it was always our choice about whether to participate.

For some people, this was a serious consideration. We went whitewater rafting one day, and at the end of the trip, one participant shared that she’d been rafting previously, there’d been an accident, and she’d ended up under the raft and nearly drowned. For her, rafting on this trip was a challenge by choice: She did it, and it was wonderful for her. (We had no problems on our trip—unless you count people determined to splash those in other rafts!)

Another traveler in our group has a serious fear of heights, and one of the activities involved walking across several “hanging bridges” through the forest: suspended metal bridges that sway as you move across them. She was petrified the first time she crossed one and clung tightly to the back of Luis’s pack (with his permission). By the second or third bridge, she asked me to take a picture of her on the bridge, with her hand firmly on Luis’s shoulder, so she could prove to family back home that she had done it. Challenge by choice.

Of the six women who showed up for ziplining, four of us had not done it before. Standing on the first platform, one woman realized that she simply could not do it, so she climbed back down—no harm, no blame. Challenge by choice, not by command. Another woman told me afterward that it was good she had gone in the middle of the pack, because if she waited, she also might not have done it—and she was glad she had. Challenge by choice.

I was so internally certain about ziplining that it hardly felt like a challenge—though I haven’t thought of myself as someone who normally embraces risks. Perhaps I’ve been learning to embrace challenges over the past year-plus, including divorce, buying a home on my own, and traveling by myself (with an awesome group of people). Each of those was a challenge by choice, and each has turned out to be a blessing.

What challenges have you chosen, and how did they turn out? When have you decided not to embrace a challenge?