Rising and Falling

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A dancer leaps through the air and seems suspended, untied for a moment to the invisible strings that keep you and me from leaving the ground permanently, but it is only illusion. An athlete rises up and up to go higher and farther than anyone else on the earth before this moment, but they can not fight what is inevitable. The physics of rise and fall, the rules that say there is no floating for us humans, only up as high as our muscles will propel and then immediately down and down again say to me here and now there is nothing but change.

For every rising there is a fall. For every up there will come a back down again. Change will happen, you can not float on an apex for even a moment. Change will come. Life is the ups and the downs strung together to form the wave patterns of your life. Yet, let me look for a moment at that. For there is an overwhelming want of a real commitment with another, there is desire for a permanence and if there is always a coming back down again from the high is such a thing for a lifetime or any significant time possible?

I say yes. A friend shared with me his theory of friendships. That there is a wonderful high, a whoosh, of early friendship. A high, a rising up of learning about and sharing with, a passion to know another human intimately. And yet that rising will reach its zenith and come back down and find a place that is no longer close to that high. And so I say when the initial rise and coming down again have settled back to where gravity pulls, to the low, it is then that the realness begins. This is when you get to give of yourself in a significant way. That is when you truly care. To share in the mundane moments, the woes and unhappiness that will come as life happens. Friendship or more, lovers or a real attempt at a commitment, it doesn't matter for all relationships, all of life will continue to rise and fall. Some fall so far they are beyond rising again. And so the changes happen. Some are wonderful good, but still the fall happen. Still change happens.

All the time, in moments so fast you are hardly cognizant the rising happens, but you must make yourself aware as that awareness of the moving up will allow real happiness. He brings you breakfast in bed and your heart rises just a little and carries up with it the joy that renews the commitment again and again. She sends you a small email of sweetness that makes your breath come just a little faster and the wave rises again and again. A friend calls to share with you her day, and in return listens to yours, up we go with all that makes a soul feel right. But all of this requires effort. The dancer and athlete know this without thinking, muscles must be used and trained and made to lift a body up and up so that the time in the air is at its maximum. And you and I know this as a heart and soul must be used and trained and made to lift another spirit up and up so that there is a purpose to our lives and that the time spent reaching for the zenith, the peak, the apex is more important than the coming back down.

Yes, it is the recognizing of the rise and the understanding of the fall that allow us to be happy. Knowing that coming down from the peak isn't an end but merely a balance that must be allowed. And too I believe we have hundreds, or perhaps thousands of waves overlapping in our lives in all the moments. Bills and jobs and responsibilities can be up and down but so often feel down, loves and joys and passions are up and down as well and just as predictably feel up and up sometimes in an all consuming manic way. Worries must be balanced with the joys and joys with reality, allow them all to overlap. Let the rising and falling become so intermingled that there is no crushing negative or positive that is overwhelming or blinding, but rather find the balance that allows peace.

Fly high my darling. You will come back down, but I will be there to rise with you again. See them both, live, feel, be them both, the highs and lows, the rising and the falling but find your balance with me.