For
some people, like Simmon’s jump, regular falling continues into adulthood.They
actually like to fall on purpose.I’ve
been reading about something fairly new called BASE jumping.BASE
stands for Building, Antenna, Span and Earth.If
you jump off a Building, Antenna, Bridge and Cliff, and your parachute
opens before you hit the ground and survive you can join a rather exclusive
club.Around 700 people have earned
this honor since 1981.I’m not sure
how many have died trying.
The
terminal velocity of a falling human body is about 120 feet per second.When
jumping off a 500 foot bridge, they have just a couple of seconds to get
their chute open.This turns out
to be plenty of time, I was surprised to discover.Paratroopers
usually jump at around 800 feet and even wait a few seconds before opening
their special chutes to get to the ground quickly.Needless
to say, BASE jumping is usually done by very experienced sky divers who
have good control of their equipment.
You’ll
be happy to know I’m definitely not interested in learning to BASE jump.In
fact, I’m realizing just how much my life has changed from my youth in
regard to falling.Now, I suppose
I go for months without falling down.And
when I do, it is almost always a surprise, slipping on a patch of ice,
tripping on an uneven sidewalk, stumbling on a stair, or smashing into
someone.And even then, this doesn’t
happen very often because I have a pretty good sense of balance.I’m
pretty fast on my feet.
I
don’t have the same feeling about falling as I did as a child.Often
I’m wearing nice clothes I don’t want to get dirty.I’m
a little further away from the ground than when I was eight years old.I
hit the ground harder and bruise more easily.
This
reluctance to fall is particularly noticeable to me with bike riding.As
many of you know, in 1977 I was hit by a car while riding a moped and suffered
a broken leg that took several years to heal.That
accident didn’t stop me from owning and riding a bike.A
few months after moving to Albany, my bike was stolen.Because
I didn’t have a safe place to store it, I didn’t replace it.After
moving to our new house, I bought a Trek hybrid.It
is the best bicycle I’ve ever owned, a joy to ride.Living
as we now do, near the Heldeberg escarpment, I took to the hills, delighting
in the bike’s climbing ability.Coming
down the hills, however, was another matter.When
I was a young daredevil, it thrilled me to zoom down a hill at top speed.Ever
since flying, falling, and sliding across an eight-lane intersection 26
years ago, the thought fills me with dread.
In
middle age, falling is taking on a new, more ominous meaning for me.I
know what it is like to recover from broken bones.I’ve
watched Philomena struggle with a frozen shoulder.I’ve
been bothered with pains in my knees.Being
a husband and father, my family depends on me now.Today,
I find self-preservation trumping my search for adventure more and more.
These
are some of the thoughts that were going through my mind as I read Philip
Simmons book titled “Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life”
a couple of weeks ago.Simmons, a
Unitarian Universalist who died in July of 2002, was an English Professor
at Lake Forest College in Illinois when he was diagnosed with ALS or Lou
Gehrig’s Disease at the tender age of 35.One
of his first symptoms was falling down unexpectedly.
Simmons
was a man who has climbed all forty-eight peaks above 4000 feet in New
Hampshire.He has been active and
athletic his whole life.He started
climbing when he was six and stopped only when the disease would no longer
permit it.Because he was prone
to falling at this point in the disease progression, he had to be extremely
mindful of very step he took, like a Buddhist practicing walking meditation.A
heedless moment and he’ll be on his face with a bloody lip or a bruised
nose.
Now
if I were in his situation, I’d want to figure out a solution to protect
myself from injury, perhaps inflatable underwear or something.I
think my approach to learning to fall would be to remember my short course
of Aikido training when I was younger.One
of the first things you learn when studying the martial arts is how to
fall.That’s because you’re going
to get tossed around a lot and if you don’t learn to fall, you’ll get hurt.Stunt
artists learn to fall as do dancers and athletes.Watching
them fall, they can be quite graceful, even beautiful.
Thinking
about learning to fall, Simmons makes a very wise observation.For
him, it is not a problem to be solved because the progression of the disease
meant there will be no solution.ALS
was forcing him to change how he had to approach living in general.He
writes:
…For
at its deepest levels life is not a problem but a mystery.The
distinction, which I borrow from the philosopher Gabriel Marcel, is fundamental:
problems are to be solved, true mysteries are not.Personally,
I wish I could have learned this lesson more easily—without, perhaps, having
to give up my tennis game.But each
of us finds his or her own way to mystery.At
one time or another, each of us confronts an experience so powerful, bewildering,
joyous, or terrifying that all our efforts to see it as a “problem” are
futile.Each of us is brought to
the cliff’s edge.At such moments,
we can either back away in bitterness or confusion, or leap forward into
mystery.And what does mystery ask
of us?Only that we be in its presence,
that we fully, consciously, hand ourselves over.That
is all, and that is everything.We
can participate in mystery only by letting go of solutions.This
letting go is the first lesson of falling, and the hardest.
Handing
myself over to “falling into mystery” is pretty challenging but rings true
to me.Perhaps these BASE jumpers,
in their own way, are practicing handing themselves over to that mystery,
and finding that the act of falling can bring them fully alive.In
the moment of greatest risk, they discover their greatest satisfaction.
Some
of us practice that leaping only in our dreams. Have
you ever had a falling dream?One
of these dreams would probably wake me up in a sweat.Falling
in a dream sometimes is interpreted as an inner struggle with feelings
of helplessness and losing control.But
for others with a little more dreaming courage, they are able to let go
and allow themselves to keep falling.Sometimes
the fall transforms into flight, soaring and swooping.Flying
dreams are very auspicious.
The
balance between holding on and letting go reminds me of Sheri.Sheri
loved rock climbing but also struggled with the fear of falling.The
sense of danger during rock climbing is part of what makes it exciting,
even addictive.But sometimes she
found she would get herself into a spot where the anxiety about reaching
or jumping to the next rock was so great that her legs would start shaking
and her palms would start sweating.These
symptoms would escalate her fear into practically a panic attack.She
would give up the climb and berate herself for her lack of courage, ready
to give up the sport.But the thrill
of a good climb would draw her back again.Her
awareness of danger, the source of her pleasure, was also her downfall.
The
tension between understanding and awareness creates dilemmas without end.The
story of Adam and Eve in Genesis expresses that struggle.Adam
and Eve are fearless until they have partaken of the fruit of the tree
of knowledge.In fact their fearlessness
creates their vulnerability.Only
after eating the apple, are they aware that they are naked.Like
little children, born without shame, they lose their innocence and learn
to fear.
The
fall from innocence is hard for all of us.That
fall can also begin to limit us.I
remember enjoying ice-skating as a child about this time of year at the
University of Delaware ice rink. I particularly liked to skate backward,
lifting my heels to make a quick stop on my toes. Then one day I fell backwards
and banged the back of my head on the ice.After
that experience, my enthusiasm for skating diminished and I stopped going.I
couldn’t get that experience out of my mind.
I
know of a woman in her early seventies who has had a fainting spell.She
has fainted only a couple of times, in the middle of the night as she got
up to go to the bathroom.These two
falls have been very disturbing for her as she was always someone in perfect
control of her life.Rather than
adapt to this new reality, she is choosing to limit her activity and stay
home more, closing her world in around her.
Sheri
chose another path.Sheri realized
that there was no solution to the fear of falling.Without
any fear, the climb wouldn’t be stimulating or challenging.She
realized she had to learn to work with the fear and take risks not knowing
the outcome.She had to learn to
manage the fear rather than solve it and embrace its mystery.
I’m
aware of this learning to manage risk in my own life.At
46, my physical health has already crested and now I’m on the downward
slope of life.I’m getting some osteoarthritis
in my ankle and fingers.My hair
is graying and lines are settling into my face.My
eyes aren’t focusing like they used to.I’m
starting to slip down the slope of aging, not knowing when the next fall
will happen.My progression of loss
has been slower, thankfully, than it was for Simmons, but each little stumble
evokes the same emotions.I fully
expect many more years of good health, and yet the grief is still there
as my youth fades away and middle age settles around my waistline and various
parts of my body begin to fall.
Simmons
continues:
Think
again of falling as a figure of speech.We
fall on our faces, we fall for a joke, we fall for someone, we fall in
love.In each of these falls, what
do we fall away from?We fall from
ego, we fall from our carefully constructed identities, our reputations,
our precious selves.We fall from
ambition, we fall from grasping, we fall, at least temporarily, from reason.And
what do we fall into?We fall into
humility, into compassion, into emptiness, into oneness with forces larger
than ourselves, into oneness with others whom we realize are likewise falling.We
fall, at last, into the presence of the sacred, into godliness, into mystery,
into our better, diviner natures.
Paradoxically,
allowing ourselves to fall into mystery can open up a new dimension of
living.Our physical wounds can actually
begin healing parts of our spirit.Our
suffering can open us to the suffering of others and deepen our connections.There
is no mistake in associating wisdom with the fruit of aging.Perhaps
wisdom isn’t something we earn or attain, but rather something we fall
into, are surprised into, while making other plans.
Simmons
concludes:
I
would rather, at least for now, find victory in the falling itself, in
learning how to live fully, consciously in the presence of mystery.When
we learn to fall we learn to accept the vulnerability that is our human
endowment, the cost of walking upright upon the earth.
So,
I’m riding my bike down those hills fast, not as fast as possible, but
at a good clip, sometimes 35 miles an hour, and I’m as alert as I can possibly
be.I’m taking risks, looking for
victory in falling, knowing I can’t control all the variables.And
when I do, I’m happy, terrified, and alive.
Copyright
© 2004 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore.All
rights reserved.