Letting go

I'm going back to circus open practice tonight to work on some moves on the silks. While I'm there, I'm going to force myself to practice a few drops. These are just what they sound like: moves on the silks (or rope) which involve falling. Generally, you get yourself wrapped up in a particular way, and then let go so that you fall and are caught by a combination of the wrappings and your hands or knees.

I have a confession to make: This kind of terrifies me. It's not that I'm so high up in the air, and there's always a mat, and (at least in class) there's always an instructor around to make sure that everything will go all right. It's just that there's always a moment where it's down to me. I'm all wrapped the way I'm supposed to be, I've got the go-ahead, I know what I'm supposed to do, and all I have to do is let go. And there's always a moment right between the one in which I'm holding on and the one in which I'm falling through the air that fills me with a jolt of mortal fear. I want to chicken out. I want to crawl back down to the ground. I want it to just be over. But the only way to get down, the only way for it to be over, is for me to trust to my strength, work up my courage, and let go.

Now that I've been working on drops for a while, I see moments like this everywhere, in my life and in the lives of others. There are time in all of our lives when we hold on too tight, able to see the next step on the path but too afraid to take it. We hesitate. We reconsider. We close our eyes and wish it were over, instead of doing something to make it so.

I know those moments all too well now, but I also know that I can get past them. And the way to get past them is not by denying the fear, but by finding the courage to push through it. It's only by trusting myself, trusting that I've done the right thing in order to keep myself safe, trusting that I'm strong enough, that I can convince myself to let go. It's ironic that sometimes the hardest thing to do is to trust ourselves, but there it is. In so many ways, it's so much easier to love the whole rest of the world, to see it the way we want it to be, than to love and be honest with ourselves. But unless I can do both of those things, I'll never be able to do the drops, to take the chances that I need to take.

So that's what I'm going to do tonight. I'm going to climb up, wrap up, and let go. I'm not going to let my fear get the best of me. I've done it before, and I can do it again. And I will. I'd be lying if I said that I'm not afraid. I am. But the important thing is learning how not to let that fear get the best of me. The important thing is learning how to feel safe enough to be brave.