The difference between flying and falling. {poetry}
{Photo via Pinterest}
The crisp new year comes rolling heavily into view, a large mass,
unstoppable and weighty, ill-defined in its enormity.
I feel small
and
unprepared.
My things are scattered around me in disarray and are sure to get crushed.
I feel an unprecedented urge
to gather, stack, inspect and organize.
I need to document past happenings and order them.
This sense of keeping, holding is so strong,
like grasping at damp weeds as the wind takes you, legs dangling, over the cliff,
arms pulled nearly out of their sockets.
Space and air around you and such a small part left in contact with the ground, with reality.
I was waiting to launch myself off the cliff.
I was ready with my hang glider,
to gracefully arc over the wide open space and soar into the air.
It’s funny really, although I never could work out in my mind
how I would actually
leave the ground.
I never considered that leaving where I am now could be so traumatic
panic-filled and that like
Lois Lane in Superman
I may have to free-fall for a bit before I get caught.
Only this time it won’t be a rescue.
I’ll learn to use my own wings by flapping wildly and crazily
Then I’ll remember to breathe and make space inside.
Expanding and calming until I begin to be light as a feather,
and catch a thermal that takes me up and up…
And here I am soaring, just like I knew I would be.
Let go of the edge. Open the clawing hands — release and feel the cool wind
separate your fingers. Understand the freedom of space, air, falling…
Leave behind solid ground, known places, confident achievements,
the sense of you-ness — who you are.
Lose it.
Just let it fly off
on the wind that rips past you
At first with letting go,
you will be consumed with the sensations of falling,
the fear and the lurch
inside your body.
The racing images in your mind that make your forehead ache,
but there is only so long you can be entranced in this fear or excitement.
(You get to choose which.)
until you cannot help but notice how different everything is now.
You are more free to move than you have ever been before.
You are completely three-dimensional and it feels like
the air around you is a part of you…
and of course, it is.
You recognize that being separate from any of this is just an illusion.
A head filled with self-importance, an anxious mind,
wanting so much to prove itself,
make its mark and be remembered
when really the whole point is just to experience.
To live completely and spectacularly, a life so terrifyingly beautiful.
Without restraint,
like a shooting star, showering its sparks
briefly and then disappearing into darkness.
It’s an apparition of control to imagine the world when we are gone.
Instead you must bolster your strength, muster your resolve and power and
let your heart burst open wide with creativity, wonder and love spilling out
in a fantastic arc of mesmerizing daring — playful and wild.
Let go…
Dive into your experience.
Choose the things that make your skin tingle, that scare you half to death,
that no one else would or could ever dream of.
Be so fully and completely you that there is no doubt that you lived and it
was beautiful, the sparks flew and it felt good.
Fall
Until
You
Fly
…it’s the only way.
***
Jemima House is a yogini and writer who experiences regular bouts of unbearable lightness and needs to be upside down a lot. Walking the tightrope between angelically mellow and devilishly stubborn, she is a wandering star with a big heart. Also the owner of Positive Living UK, a unique network supporting and inspiring people in living their passion.
***
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