WHY JUMP WHEN YOU KNOW TO LAND IS INEVITABLE?
-- BEGIN --
Does that bother you, he asked?
She thought for a moment.
Only in the way gravity might bother someone trying to jump, she said.
[A pause]
Imagine: your effort to do something or be someone always abated by an
opposing force. That's jumping, really: by your own will you launch
yourself upwards, and by a will not your own you are landed
downwards. Why jump when you know to land is inevitable? It's for the
apex, I think, when the two wills nullify---each perfectly opposing
the other such that the wills won't---and you feel neither yourself
nor everything you are not. Now suppose one could jump unencumbered by
opposition, that gravity were not a limit upon how high someone can
jump. But that's not jumping, is it? To jump is to experience one's
own action, resistance from something other, and stillness when the
two are perfectly met. Like this, I wouldn't be myself if I did not
feel the arc of everything I am, everything I'm not, and neither what
I have or what I lack.
[A pause]
So, he said, does it bother you?
Yes, she replied, it bothers me. But it doesn't stop me from jumping.
-- END --