Jump Off a Cliff

I’m a full-time risk taker.  When I’m standing on a cliff, looking across a chasm, I will always jump.  It doesn’t matter how far it is to the other side – I am going to jump.

I do this because I have discovered that I would rather be bloody and broken at the bottom of a ravine than walking away from the edge of a cliff, wondering if I could have made the jump if I tried.

Let me be clear – I’m not suggesting that this is a way for everyone to live. The law of averages says that if you live this way you’re going to end up broken and bloody at the bottom of a ravine sometimes, trust me when I tell you that I have and do, and that kind of risk is not for everyone.  Risk has rewards to be certain.  But safety has…well, safety.

When I fall and I remember “The Lion in Winter” (as quoted on The West Wing):

Prince Geoffrey:  You fool…as if the way one fell down mattered.

Prince Richard:  When the fall is all that’s left, it matters a great deal.

So I never just give up and fall.  I kick and scream, I try to fly, I grab for the vines and the rocky outcroppings.  Sometimes I catch myself and climb back up, sometimes someone throws a rope.  Sometimes I hit the bottom, hard.

But what I have found to be true for me is that bloody and broken, however painful, heals.  The way I feel when I turn and walk away from the edge never heals.

So I jump.

I succeed.  I celebrate.

I fall.  I heal.

And I fling myself full-force into the abyss again.  Thoreau said that most men lead lives of quiet desperation.  I’m am not most men, and so I jump.