The Difference Between Falling and Jumping
On Fear, Control, and Being Alive
Dear Friend,
I wondered this week if this is how it feels to live one’s best life. I played a live concert. I spent 2 days writing and recording a new song. I listened to my sons play with their amazing jazz trio. I helped my wife perform and record a debut performance with her classical trio. I took my family to cut down a Christmas tree. We began our annual search for the world's best eggnog. I took my daughter to private violin lessons. I lost a game of chess to my 7-year-old son. I took a long walk with my wife—we talked about hosting a Christmas Carol sing-along in our home. I can't imagine a much better week in the life of Nathan Peterson.
Five months ago, I wondered if my marriage, my family, or my business would survive the summer. I applied for jobs stocking shelves and washing dishes. I was afraid, and I felt alone. I wondered how I could have worked so hard to be a good man my entire life, only to be at a point of failure in just about every area I associated with manhood. This was only five months ago.
You might wonder, as I have, how life can swing so dramatically in just five months. But it’s more dramatic than that: in my experience, these extremes exist not only months apart, but within weeks, days, even moments.
Does this make me crazy? Maybe! :)
Or maybe it makes me human. Could this just be how it feels to be alive?
The circumstances of life—including the biology in my own body and brain—are infinitely complicated, active, and unpredictable. To feel life—to be alive—is to surrender to this infinite uncertainty... and possibility.
Could it be that the "problem" of uncertainty is just a negative view of the gift of life's possibilities?
What is the difference between falling and jumping?
If we pay close attention, we find that our feelings of terror and of exhilaration are the same. The difference is our point of view.
Throughout my life, in a million ways, I've chased an illusive and alluring sense of control.
But if life is uncontrollable—if it is this infinite, deep space of uncertainty (and possibility) which is the fabric of life—in what direction have I spent my life running?
I’ve been running away long enough.
Long enough to know that what I’m chasing doesn’t exist. Long enough to see the lie behind the allure of “control.”
In our attempt to run away from the feeling of falling to our death, we run right off a cliff—we may not feel the fall, but by definition, by spending our life running away instead of toward, we are already dead.
I’ve run away long enough. I’m ready to live.
And, yes, this might mean facing my fears. It might mean feeling out of control. But maybe this is just how life feels. This is not only a path to fear; it is the path to joy.
What will tomorrow bring? Is it safe to open the floodgates of uncertainty and possibility? I don’t know. But I do know this: keeping them closed is no safer.
Open the floodgates.
—Nathan
Originally posted at: https://nathanpeterson.net/the-difference-between-falling-and-jumping
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