Diving into oblivion
I met a source and friend of mine for dinner on Wednesday night and when we arrived at the restaurant I learned the owner’s dad had just passed suddenly. He said his mother was holding his father because he didn’t feel well all of a sudden and his father turned to her and said, “I love you.” And then died. My dinner date said that she had just been to a funeral on Monday, a grand second line and celebration funeral of a 35 year old woman (who reminds me of you, she turned to me and said, she has that making her own way attitude that you have) who had thrown herself off the Mississippi River Bridge.
I thought about Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the gull who is forced by his nature to make his own way and then becomes outcast from the flock, only later to find others who believe as he does, that perfecting knowledge is the goal and his desire to fly could now be taught to others. The 35 year old woman’s desire to fly culminated in her dying. I’m not interested in that except in a metaphysical way.
If in dying, I can be reborn, I’m all about it but even the flying I’m doing in acro yoga is scary and unnerving. Forcing myself into it because I need to is the part of me that wants to fly, while resistance is the part of me that is scared to fly. You can spend a lifetime trying to overcome your fear of flying, or you succumb to the fear and dive into oblivion.