Falling Toward the Future

1. Hands and arms reach out and hold me. They are limbs without a body; actions without motivation; flesh without a skeleton. They grasp and obstruct me as I fall toward the floor. They wish me no harm, but like so many do-gooders, they do not see the full extent of their actions. Their good intentions nearly always go awry somewhere down the road.

2. I once heard from a dancer that walking is nothing but failing to fall over and over again, that walking is simply us falling forward repeatedly but putting out a foot to stop from hitting the ground. This struck me and it made me wonder: is walking succeeding to walk or failing to fall? And is falling failing to walk or succeeding to fall? If the two are the same, is it better to fail at falling or to succeed at walking?

3. Here in this moment, I understand Salman Rushdie. I understand Gallileo and Judas. And Malcom X. I understand Matthew Sheperd and OJ Simpson and Ellen Degeneres. And my mother. And my best friend. And hundreds of years of bloody history. I understand the feeling of suspended falling, the nameless hands holding back your every step, thinking that your feet will not land, that you will succeed at falling: that you will fail at walking.

4. It’s the permanence of words that scars. Failure. Success. These words seem absolute. They are confining. But the scars will heal and we’ll have learned about falling. We’ll learn a new way to walk, a new way to live. And we’ll learn something that we never thought possible...

5. …is not only possible, but easy. All things being equal, the simplest solution is usually the answer.