FALL DOWN

Sometimes falling is the best thing you can do.

That goes against everything I've ever felt, really.  As I grew up, I took on this inbred belief that I couldn't fall.  Not that I wasn't ABLE to fall, but that I couldn't fall.  Falling meant failure. And failure meant I wasn't good enough.  I wasn't smart enough.  My independence was idiotically intense about this.  I could do it.  I could do it by myself. And I could do it with flying colors, or it wasn't worth anything.

I never really understood then that falling and failure are important.  I never comprehended that failure was only failure if I refused to learn from it, or that failure was an important component of ultimate success.

We have to fall down.  None of us are perfect... and if we get to thinking that we are? That's the time that we need to fall down the most.  Sometimes, it's in this time of ego and confidence that we forget that we are NOT perfect and we cannot do it by ourselves.  We start to believe that we can do all things because we are freaking awesome.  And we forget, oh do we forget, that we are not everything we think we are.

It's here that we need to fall down.  We need to crash and burn.  We need the world and everything we think about ourselves to come crashing down around us.  It is here, in the ashes and the rubble, that we can look around and see things as they are.  If we are wise, if we haven't run off everyone who loved us, and if we can find the strength, we can stand up out of the rubble, surrounded by those who care.  We can learn from the fall, see what brought us to the edge.  And start again...  this time, a little wiser.