Sitting down

I just got off the phone with a great friend.  After giving her the run-down of the past week's fun and funkiness, she reminded me of the practice of flowing.  She spoke of the human need to control things and of the impossibility of doing so all the time.   Sometimes, things will emerge out of the changed forms of other things, and we have no way of knowing or even guessing how it will look or be.

Every time I speak with this friend, the conversation leads her to speak some little nugget of wisdom. The last time, as we were talking about being too hard on ourselves most of the time, she said, "I want to treat myself like I treat a lover," and this notion sent me reeling for weeks as I realized how thoughtful, forgiving, and kind I am to my lovers and as I tried to figure out how to be the same way with myself.  That last nugget of wisdom just might have changed my whole life. And the nugget she gave me today might be equally as important to my life.  It was this:

"Sometimes you just have to sit down without knowing whether there's a chair there behind you."

Phew.  The idea is, I think, to trust that the chair is there (who was it who said, "Leap, and the net will appear"?), but I also see that it's not such a big deal if it isn't there. Yeah, you'll fall on the floor and if anyone is nearby, they'll have to quiet their instinct to laugh at you as they offer you a hand to help you get up (and anyone far enough away will not quiet their instinct and will laugh at your fumble).  So what?

Last week, Wade and I went to a place called JUMP STREETS, which is basically a huge trampoline room for kids. We were, by far, the oldest people there and we were bouncing around like kangaroos. I was practicing front flips and working up the nerve to try backflips.  When I did try them, it was fun, even though I never quite landed them.  But Wade would do this silly thing of jumping up really high with a huge goofy grin on his face and then landing as if he were sitting (like landing in a pike, I guess) and then bouncing back up to standing.  In essence, he was sitting in a place where there was no chair.

Of all the moves I tried that day (including bouncing off the wall-mounted trampoline, head flips and the aforementioned backflip), the chair-sit move was the hardest to try.  Obviously, I knew I was safe, and that I'd have no choice but to land on the trampoline and bounce back up.  But there was some mental blockage against sitting down with no chair behind me.

Of course, I eventually tried it.  And of course I laughed the whole time.  The first time, I think I bounced up and fell forward onto my face (or, at least, I imagine it that way because I like slapstick).  The second time I tried it I landed back up on my feet.  And then, before long, it was like nothing.  This is probably one of the first moves they teach in gymnastics classes (or whatever kind of class it is that takes place on a trampoline), but for me, it was the one that invoked the most fear.  I don't even know what I was afraid of; I was just afraid.  But, it turned out to be super easy and very fun.

So, as I apply my friend's nugget of wisdom, I'm going to imagine my whole life taking place in a trampoline.  It's a place where my skips, trips and falls are met with a bouncy surface that pops me back up again.  It's a place where -- with a little bit of common sense, caution, nerve and cardio endurance -- my attempts to practice old moves or try new ones are rewarded with giggles and soft landings. It's a place where I can sit down without knowing if there's a chair behind me and discover what's ready to be discovered.