Don't Look Down

Lately I've been thinking about bridges.

And mistakes.

And hearts.

These lines of thought will come together, I swear.  Okay, they might not on paper or in this post, but they will at some point completely come together.

I frequently refer to myself as an idiot, as idiotic.  I have a litany of quotes about idiots- what it means to be one, how to act as one.  But I always circle back to the notion that an idiot repeats his or her mistakes- egregiously.  (Einstein's is more on insanity but works as well: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result.)  Like an Escher drawing constantly looping back on itself, the idiot goes up and down and winds around and around the same mistake over and over and over, thinking that that mistake will lead to different outcomes.

Escher may have well been drawing my idiotic mug.

Lately I've been thinking about the mistakes that I make with my heart.  There are one or two mistakes that I try valiantly to avoid- but seem to waltz myself right into each and every time I put my heart out there.  Maybe the first mistake is putting my heart out there?  Exposing the beating base of my existence to begin with?  But that is a different post for a different time.

This is about bridges.  And mistakes… and hearts and stuff.

It seems like I've been standing on one side of a very deep chasm for a while now.  Let's call my side… Hope.  Then there's the chasm (very deep).  Then, on the other side, there's… well… The Other Side.  It's not hopelessness per say- The Other Side is not the opposite of this side, it's just the other side.  The side over there.  I have stayed on this side.  Not because I'm fearful of The Other Side, but because I'm caught up in a web of mistakes on this side.  And because I'm afraid of the chasm- the free fall to the bottom of bad.  And because I am an idiot, because I keep hoping that this side, Hope, is going to work out.  (It's another one of the mistakes I keep making.)

But lately a new addition has appeared between this side and that side- a bridge.  A bridge called Resignation.  And this bridge is a bitch.

Because it simultaneously strengthens and weakens with each and every mistake that I make.  When I make a mistake- poof, it gets a little weaker, a little less, err, supported.  When I realize that mistake- imagine that! it's suddenly stronger, suddenly wider and seems so much closer.  There are times that I want to bolt across it, one foot in front of the other just to get across.  (Why did the Kate cross the bridge?  To get to The Other Side.)  Then there are times, times when I am still tethered to Hope, when I can barely set one foot on that damned bridge before vertigo sets in.  I shake and shiver and think to myself, this side is so safe, solid ground is so much safer.  And then I think, HOLD ON, you can do this, just don't look down.

Don't look down.

Down just gets you to the bottom of the bloody chasm.  Look ahead, look straight ahead.  One foot in front of the other, and maybe this bridge wasn't built by Escher.  One foot in front of the other, look so straight ahead.  Leave the same old mistakes with Hope, on this side.  One foot in front of the other, each step across Resignation is a step closer to realization.  One foot in front of the other and then you are on The Other Side.

And who knows what the Hell kind of mistakes exist on that side?

Until then,

With Hope and Love always and Idiocy.