Sometimes i wonder if they had considered the possibility that you had calculated the risk and decided that the pain from one fall while rocking your chair was worth it for the joy of leaning back, tittering on the edge of danger, testing your ability to trust yourself in small doses.
“Utaanguka.”
In a play a poet talks about why he is afraid of joy because he knows that all sunlight does is cause the water to evaporate, creating clouds – a storm is coming.
To be afraid of joy but still risk happiness is kind of like base jumping. Except maybe that it isn’t – and that you learn on the way down. Do you trust yourself enough to learn before gravity, indifferent to your will, accelerates the ground into your face?
“Falling down is easy when you’re close to the ground”
- Labbi Siffre
Maybe then they should have let you practice how to fall gracefully, while you were still close to the ground and could carefully calculate just how happy you could let yourself be, before it all falls apart.
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