Sunday Story...The Edge

The drop off is dizzying. The edge looks scary from a distance and if you get closer your heart beats faster, your breath comes quicker, and the fear rises in your throat like bad medicine. As you get nearer the horizon disappears and the only focus point is the rapidly disappearing ground and the looming abyss. The edge is scary and exhilarating, life threatening and life enhancing all at once.

The problem is you are actually sitting on your couch, in the comfort of your living room looking at the edge on television. Granted that big screen makes it look real. The surround sound has the wind screaming in your ears, the waves breaking on the rocks below and the cry of gulls in the distance. But you aren’t there. You are nowhere near the edge. You aren’t even in the same state or maybe even the same continent. You have somehow deluded yourself into thinking that you are at the edge, that you could actually fall off. The fear is there and real, your heart is pounding and your breath is catching but the edge is far, far away.

We all like to think we are near the edge. We all want to be the adventurer, the Indiana Jones grabbing the priceless statues and defeating the booby traps and defying death in our escape. But most of us never get close to the edge. We are kidding ourselves, lying to ourselves in an attempt to assuage an ego dying for some sort of challenge past accounting nightmares, tax audits, and traffic jams.

Honestly most of us will never get close to the “Indiana Jones” edge. Most of us will never attempt to scale Everest or protest injustice in some far off town square facing down government guns. We have real lives that are consumed by the mundane and the average, the normal. Yet the edge has us feel alive and the hint of the possibility of death and dismemberment paradoxically fills us with life and life force. Walking the edge is like that. The line between life and death is very close. And that is the one thing watching the edge on TV doesn’t get me.

So what are you going to do? Chuck it all and go out looking for death defying feats and peaks to climb? Is that really necessary to get closer to the edge? No it is not. But I can guarantee you that you will never find the edge sitting on your butt on the couch watching the Telly and eating crap. And I don’t care what you are watching…it is not the same as doing, it is not the same as stepping into the arena yourself.

So…The Edge…
--get off the freaking couch; stop living your life vicariously through the people who are out there doing it.
--find things that will challenge who you think you are…physically, intellectually, spiritually.
--attack those things like your life depended on them (because it does).
--do it again and again and again.

When was the last time you sprinted? I mean flat out ran as fast as you can? I suspect if you are older than 16 it has been a long, long time. I see it all the time in the gym. People who think they are going fast enough. Fast enough isn’t good enough. It’s the excuse you are giving for not going to the edge. After all you might get out of breath, light headed, or throw up or pass out. You probably won’t die (survival instincts being what they are). You can go faster. You can do more, lift more, be faster and then go again. Always…you really have no idea where the Edge is. You think you have seen it. You think you have stepped over it, but really you haven’t. You are nowhere near the Edge. The real Edge, where the ground is a bit crumbly and a misstep might cost you your life. That Edge is a ways off for most of us (me included.)

You don’t have to chuck it all, no. But you do have to start getting closer. You do have to decide to begin looking for the real edge because it is out there. Start with a simple all out sprint. From here to the telephone pole…as fast as you can…fast like a bear is chasing you and you are the only prey. You are running for your life, that bear is just running for his dinner and if you don’t want him to win you better reach down and find something else in there. As fast as you can. As fast as you have ever gone before. As fast as is possible, leaving absolutely nothing left for the next round because if you don’t beat that bear to the pole there is no next, there is no do over, there is no “mulligan.”

The Edge. Stop being wimpy and get going toward the edge. And when you get there and I mean really get there, not just the photograph of the edge, take a step off. That’s right…go over the edge. And fly. You will be surprised at how far you have come and how far you will go.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

Follow me at:
Twitter --- http://m.twitter.com/jmariotti
FaceBook --- John Mariotti
Blog Spots…John Mariotti
http://feel-good-friday.blogspot.com/
http://sunday-stories.blogspot.com/