I was reading confessions of a self-help-whore and had these thoughts: Weve all been there... late night alone with a book that promises to reveal the location of the magic door key, the one that opens OUR door so we can at last find out what the hell we are supposed to be doing here. Yes, we can and do excel at many, many things. So many that we get caught up in the obligation of just expressing excellence because we believe that it is in such short supply that we would be wasting, even squandering a valuable resource if we were to pass on the opportunity to use it. Then we build an entire life dependent upon doing that. Even so, sometimes, when we have just had E-NUFF, we have to at last do something, anything, to give us the chance to find the damn key. Oddly enough, there are no keys in mid-air when you jump off a cliff. Oh, there could be one at the bottom of the ocean that you are plummeting towards, but there is no way you will snare it from the rushing air while you accelerate at 32 ft. / second / second. Unfortunately, upon landing in crashing waves after having taken the plunge, we do not usually take one more gulp of the last breath available and head down even deeper. No, when we land and find to our pleasant surprise that we are not yet dead, we immediately begin plotting our ascendance back to the very spot that we just leap from. This may not actually be a conscience thought, but it is absolutely what drives us in the instance of survival and panic. For a while the challenge itself is satisfying, or at least distracting, but we surely will arrive having triumphed with sheer will at the reemergence of what substitutes for accomplishment, for the moment. And that moment, my friends, is not sweet at all. In our perplexed state of mind as we realize that we have been here before... we may yet again leap off the very same cliff to try it again. To do it better. But, by now we know to take a breath as the waves wash over our heads. We know how to reserve our strength when the tide oscillates between the push toward shore and the suck towards open peril. We know that with quiet patience we will in fact get out of this seeming certain death trap and we will survive intact. You might think that revelation would be in and of itself a deterrent to succeeding in a game already won, but it isnt. When we do not know what else to do, we begin to accept what we can do and we swim back at some point with not so much determination as resolve. At some point in this process we look over the edge of the cliff we now know so very well, see the crashing turbulent waves, and feel certain that there is no answer in that place. We are not too afraid to jump, we just know theres nothing down there to rescue us, or to guide us. And this is the moment of acceptance that becomes the rest of our life. Either we cease looking, or we realize that the path was not the leap but instead is the way that we have already come. Its a tiring prospect to realize that you cannot free yourself with one action alone. You must traverse the path you climbed to get where you are, in reverse. You have to climb down, not jump. You have to carefully place your feet and hands upon a path of descent. You have to systematically undo your life with the greatest of care and responsibility until you reach level ground. You must take what is valuable and necessary, and nothing else. Level ground is the place for building foundations, not water. And certainly not the edge of cliffs. If you resolutely climb down from your unsatisfying cliff view then you will arrive intact upon solid ground that you can then traverse. I have leapt. More than once. I have realized that surviving was not accomplishment. I have realized that the reconquering view is unsatisfactory. I have begun the planned descent toward terra firma. When I arrive there I will not know where to go, but I know that the effort to get to the starting point is the true first beginning of it all.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 20:05:00 +0000