Falling Isn’t the Only Way to Feel Alive

A variation of a really old joke:

A man falls from the top of a skyscraper and as he falls, he hears someone call out from a window, “YOU OK?” Yells back: “SO FAR SO GOOD!”

Let’s face it, we are all hurtling toward our inevitable end. And isn’t that the a response we too often offer – as the wind hits our face: So far so good? Really? And despite what skydivers may tell you, falling isn’t the only way to feel alive. (But it can be a lightning bolt lesson!)

Here’s another way, from the poet, Mary Oliver:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

What would it look like if you chose to live this one wild and precious life awakened to all that is? What are you stopping to notice? What’s passing you by as you hold onto that which is certain? 

Where are you now, what’s missing, and what’s here?