It's an adrenaline kick, right there are the edge of everything. Your vision narrows. Your heart races. And somehow your feet follow, one after the other, right up to the precipice and into space. You can't stop to think, because if you do - if you pause for even a moment to consider what you're doing - the journey of a few steps can take a lifetime. Die to yourself for a moment, and gain new life at the bottom.
That was something we learned early on in my high school literature classes. Water always means life. And when you're jumping off of a cliff at a waterfall in Brazil, suddenly all of those lectures make sense. It felt like flying and falling and a heart attack and there was pain when I landed wrong, because even good things can hurt. Then, after all of that, after getting sucked by my momentum deep deep underwater, after swimming for the surface but not quite knowing where it was, I emerged weak and gasping for air. And oh, I felt so good.
Life is scary shit. Sometimes it's really, really hard. Sometimes it looks like a cliff that you're walking over, and you're not sure what's at the bottom. But no seed that ever sprouted into a tree could do it without first letting go and falling. The gravity that holds us down helps us up.
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