Walk to the Edge
it is not the easy or convenient life for which i search, but life lived to the edge of all that i may be.
one often meets their destiny on the
way to somewhere else. at first glance
it may appear too hard. look again. always
look again.
i awakened. isn't that a wonderful
statement? i awakened. oh that it were true in
every cell of my being. i awakened! i no longer
slept. i did not draw down the shades of my
spirit and remain forever slumbered to the
vitality of life. i set aside numbness and even
willingly choose pain over not feeling. ah. there's
a lesson here. is it the self-punisher who would
contrast a willingness for pain over numbness?
i see the reach but i must invent a new internal
dynamic. i would choose joy. i would choose
JOY over pain.
I asked a participant in my wordshop, Art for the Creatively Reluctant, if he was happy with his work. He responded, “How would I know if I am happy with it if I have never done it before? I have nothing to compare it to.”
Implicitly this asserts it is only by comparison or contrast that we make assessment and assertion. (I am tempted to measure experience against experience and myself against other people.)
Where do I fall on the continuum? If that person is excellent then must I be less than excellent? And if this experience is peak, does that mean the elevation of this other experience is lower? Can we not stand atop many tall mountains and savor each of their views without comparison? Could my guest have taken a snapshot of his immediate feelings and simply allowed himself to be “happy” with words, with creating, with the enthusiastic support around him? Apparently, not so easily. He required a frame of reference, a means of comparison in order to feel good about his creating.
Comparison and qualifiers. “You are this, but you are not that.” Or “This experience contained this, but it was absent that.” This is how we encounter disappointment. Comparison breeds expectation, and expectation envisions. If the actual sight is different from the vision, then rather than producing surprise or delight, it creates disappointment. So in this day and then day by day collected into the larger frame which is the picture, the snapshot of my life, may I awaken with anticipation, not expectation, that I may experience delight rather than disappointment.
Walk to the edge.
Said another way (as it has been said many other ways): live boldly. Not an endorsement of recklessness or cavalier behavior, but an urging to push personal limits. Live boldly, not loudly. Not at the highest volume on the dial, but dialed to the best reception. What a grating experience to listen long to a radio station that is not dialed to the best reception. One must strain to hear even incorrectly—the programming comes in and goes out. You are uncertain if the missed details were key to understanding. What did you miss? Being dialed in—fully receiving the signal—that's what it is to live boldly. And that is what it takes to walk to the edge.
I visited the cliffs of a moor in Ireland. The fencing (designating the safe viewing place from the step just before “over the edge”) was very un-fence-like. Really more like the small fence used around a flower bed. More decorative than functional. I remember being startled by the innocuous nature of the fence. As if it were a gentle suggestion that you might not want to travel beyond this point but if you are interested in going to the edge and hanging over, we wouldn't want to prevent you the experience. Yes. Those very thoughtful Irish. I did walk to the edge. And I did peer over. Not for long, for the drop took my breath. Not steep; straight down. But what a view.
Walk to the edge. Push your boundaries. Question your assumptions—those that are your own and those that others presume for you to undertake. Take all your expectations, which are kept in little boxes, and stack the boxes in the form of a ziggurat, or pyramid. And then step up and to the edge of it. Einstein believed that it is madness to continue the same actions and expect different results.
Walking to the edge is performing an action with the expectation of creating different results. Therefore the action must be different. It is not an invitation to continually make yourself uncomfortable—but rather, to question your comfort ability. What opportunities are missed by simply claiming the action that is most familiar, the one that is easiest to reach from where you're standing?
Conventional wisdom might retort with, “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.”
A thing can break slowly. So slowly I don't even notice the break. I simply learn to compensate. Over time I've operated in tried ways with a system which is profoundly dysfunctional and I've not noticed. This happens all the time when people injure themselves. Fractures gradually worsen but the ability to compensate and mask over pain is staggering.
What happens when I walk to the edge? At the cliffs of the moor I lost a good amount of my breath. I was afraid. I moved away from my traveling companion warily, lest his sudden movement, wholly impersonal and not owing to me anything, should accidentally tip me toward a view I would not much care for (accidentally becoming quite personal). I compared the Irish fence structure and my concept of “fence” (developed in a lifetime of living in America) with what a fence is supposed to accomplish. In the moments before my desire of not wanting to fall tiptoed me back over the small fence, I felt a holy and unfamiliar wind. The colors of this majestic wonder compelled my imagination. Not in any other place in Ireland did I have the full impact of islandness than I had standing in this spot, this very vulnerable spot.
So. It may be frightening. Standing at the edge validates or clarifies our values and provides a sense of what is truly important. Loyalty and a sense of trust in our companions is called into question at the edge: one is more inclined to fend for one's own safety than depend, magnanimously, on the good intentions of another. Walking to the edge is something more likely to be done alone than with another or in a group. Walking to the edge becomes a very selective process. Who is at your shoulder or taking on the wind alongside you is very significant. To stand next to that person at the edge requires a great bit of trust. Generally, it's not advisable to walk to the edge as a social setting. The edge is an inappropriate context for gaining group consensus. Consideration by committee takes too long when one is faced with the choice between a few inches to a two-hundred-foot drop or flat ground behind a small fence.
And what of that drop? What are the consequences of such a fall? Is it correct to assume the results are death? Walks to the edge point out a knowledge base that needs to be filled out. Questions that need to be answered. Assumptions that can be challenged.
The view. After all the other considerations perhaps it is the view, which is the best justification for such steps. “The best place to stand is where everybody else—isn't.” Just as the best thing about leading a parade is that there are no hats, trombones, or batons to look around or over. Leading the parade provides the best view. (Leading a parade also provides the best view of you—it's a visible and vulnerable place.)
I am looking at a view—and I give my breath over to it. With grace, it gives my breath back. I determine to do a thing at the edge not because it makes me uncomfortable but in spite of the fact that it does. I allow that discomfort to instruct me; it is the discomfort of an experience at the edge that is the personal litmus of when it is time to step back behind the fence—or, perhaps, off the edge.
Stretch your usual patterns. (Recognize that habit provides a certain discipline or safety.) Do