And that's not true about just me. An old saying hints at rule-breaking. We watch the calendar for signs of feast days. Pull chastity belts tighter on dusks of full moon. From the cradle, we learn rules by repetition, write our life in a symphony of memetics - yet never ask
why should the rules that you accept be good enough for me?
How could they ever dream of holding in my nature, a different breed to yours? And what sad, injured self am I nurturing to assume I have to make do with everyone else's?
What mother nursed you to assume there aren't laws out there written especially for you?
Hear me and shift your focus from the balls of your feet, the lukewarm comfort in the center of your soles. Dare to the fringes. Trace each toe. Hang loose on the outer edge of your feet. Lean back on your heels and feel yourself an acrobat. My acrobat.
You must learn the measure of your own, unique step in this world to understand how you must live. What rules are left for your breaking. Where you lose balance and disintegrate into chaos.
And then, you must disintegrate. Only in falling, you find true freedom. We learn, most yous and mes, to balance on our feet around age two? Three? Even the stragglers have got it down by now. Once learned, we accept by default that there's no real reason to lose our balance anymore.
Any fall past the age of four becomes a reason for embarrassment. When grown-ups fall, it's inevitably accompanied by the great thud of their supposed dignity. I'm here to tell you you can learn to fall better. I'm heavy-footed, but I've learned to fall light on my feet. To lean into the discomfort of not knowing. To expose myself to danger of concussion is to learn a secret pattern that allows me to fly.
I've learned to fall because it's more embarrassing to live a life of upright stillness. I crave imbalance because once I find it, it spells out in its stumbles and wilts, a rhythm the Universe composed just for me.
I teach my body to fall only for it to teach me back the secret knowledge by which my limbs redress themselves in motion. I learn it doesn't matter if I stand still or teeter precariously on my tippy-toes. One foot in the air or around a waist, my body knows already how to find balance.
Even in moments of imbalance. Moreover, demands them. I'm no tyrant to expect my body's cooperation in this pursuit for equilibrium. I must let it fall so it can balance anew, and with it, all my socialite pretenses.
Mid-flight, whisper 'good riddance'.
