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The Net May or May Not Appear

“Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down,” —Ray Bradbury

I’m a leaper. For better or worse (often for worse), I trust my instincts completely. When my gut says leap, I leap: groundless, in love with whatever I’ve surrendered myself to in that moment, and on my way to quickly and indelibly finding out if it loves me back.

At times I’ve felt ashamed of this. When I make terrible choices that hurt me, or come to conclusions that perhaps I would not have made if I had walked or crawled instead, I envy the slow deciders. The cautious and careful. The reasonable. Surely they didn’t get up on stage to sing and screw it all up. Or take the wrong job. Or marry the wrong guy and end up alone with a two-year-old. Surely they don’t follow their intuition all over creation just to land back home where they started. The slow movers must arrive somewhere significant and well planned, right?

Lately, I’ve taken a new position on my leaping tendencies. I’ve decided to accept that this is the way I am. It doesn’t matter where the slow movers net out, because this is not my speed and it’s not the way I’m going to move through life, no matter how much I might appreciate the advantages of a more cautious pace.

For better or for worse, my passions are huge, my movements are often dramatic, and I trust this way of being because it feels the most natural. My job as a leaper is to accept that risks are, well, risky. The net may or may not appear when I am in full-throttle motion. I can beat myself up about the fact that I’m free-falling in unknown territory, or I can build my wings on the way down, as Ray Bradbury suggests.

For me, the mandatory wing-building skills are gratitude, forgiveness, reckoning, and recommitment. Freedom is my primary value, and courage is the transportation of my choosing. I take risks that help me grow because I am willing to make mistakes, get hurt, look stupid, and disappoint myself and others.

The older I get, the more I wonder if the net is even the right thing to wish for. When we are moving at our natural speed, we lean into the opportunities and learn the lessons that are most aligned with who we are.

I don’t know anyone who believes that they can do something before they actually do it. It’s the blind leap that helps us discover the distance between us and our goals, the skills we need to cultivate to bridge the distance, and the tenacity to persist until we figure it out.

Every landing teaches us the art of flight, no matter how clumsy or difficult or ecstatic it might be.