On those lessons we're taught...we get to choose if we are going to listen. And if we are going to remember.
However, a lot of it can't be taught. It can't be told. It has to be lived.
It has to be lived.In our youth, we're told that "falling in love" is just something that is "young love." We're told that believing in these hopes and dreams of being something extravagant is attainable. And so we fall. We fall in love with a future that does not exist. We fall in love with a dream of a life that isn't lived.
And we fall. We tragically fall for something we don't have. Oh, what a slumber to awaken from. To realize that not all of the dream was reality.
But what about the dreams? In dreams, something special occurs. That moment where the unexpected happens. Where life becomes different. And you learn the art of falling without falling.
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I recently went sky diving with one of my best friends. It was a brilliant moment. Not because I had it on a bucket list for my life. Not because I wanted to fulfill one of the items on Tim McGraw's "Live Like You Were Dying." Because for a moment in my life, I fell freely in an open sky. I jumped out of a plane and smiled and laughed at the fact that the earth was below me. I had nothing but an endless about of sky to my right and left and ground beneath me (and a 50+ year old man strapped to my back).
The amount of peace that came over what I want to say was my "heart and soul" really could have just been my body preparing to die as I looked out from the plane and saw the county of Fayetteville beneath me. Regardless, there is something about that moment. About that day. It reminded me that we fall a lot. We jump out of planes to say we did something beyond humanity. We run with bulls to say that we survived something that is historical. We adventure to corners of the earth because we want to be a sponge and soak it all in.
This side of heaven, we learn to fall. Whether if we fall out of planes, into love, out of love, or into more of the days that we never knew could happen. We are learning to fall.
And that isn't taught. We learn to fall by living.
Happy falling. Wear knee pads.
-S
