Park Writing I

Writing. Just by itself, letting it come from my head to my fingers and into life. I believe in that. Writing for the sake of writing, the act therapeutic and fun at the same time. Just let words flow from your mind into the keyboard, just let them come. Ignore the software telling you that your sentence is a fragment. Write in fragments. Ignore the rules, use poetic license. Make up new words. Whatever you want to talk about, it’s important to someone, somewhere, and your computer always cares.

The computer, the piece of paper and pencil, they’re always there to take your troubles, to take the weight of the world onto their face. They won’t reject you, assuming your computer doesn’t break down and that on a sunny day the wind won’t blow your paper away. They’re always there to catch a moment which even a camera wouldn’t succeed to describe.

Sitting outside, people-watching. See a little kid hop up onto a bench, and with his Daddy’s help, he walks the edge. He’s laughing, throwing his head back, his curly brown hair blowing in the Mistral, and he’s smiling at the sky. He holds his dad’s hand tighter as they reach the end of the wood—he doesn’t quite know where to go from here. The little boy suddenly makes a decision, and he grasps onto his dad’s hand firmly. His dad braces himself to make sure he can support his son’s weight. Suddenly, the little boy launches himself off the bench, with a shriek only a child could create. He flies through the air, the Mistral in his face and the sun in his eyes. He lands solidly on two feet. Proud of himself, he and his dad walk on down the path, hand in hand.

That probably took less than five seconds, but it got me thinking.

Why can’t we be more like that little boy? When the end of something is coming near, why do we all have to battle the desire to run the other way? We know that someone will be on the other side of the bench holding our hand, but for some reason we can’t follow in that little boy’s footsteps. We can’t jump. We can’t make ourselves forget about everything else and leap. Just a little leap—whatever it changes, whatever it doesn’t, none of that matters. What matters is the jump itself. The moment when your shoes leave the pavement, to make that next important step. That’s the moment that scares us to death, that we might be making some irrevocable mistake, and that we’ll lose something we’ll never going to be able to get back.

To pacify ourselves, we tell ourselves that it won’t be different. It’s not that big of a step. We’ll be able to undo our misstep if something goes wrong, and everything will go back to normal.

What we don’t realize is how little it takes for a person to change. As I’m sitting here, writing this, I’m changing. Everyone is constantly shifting in their skin, trying to find the most comfortable fit. People change from week to week, day to day, minute to minute. We don’t realize this, so we overreact when there is something that could cause a shift in persons or personalities. We just need to realize that after we take the step—

Yes. You will be different.
Yes. You’re losing something that you’ll never get back.
No. You won’t be the same person you were before, and neither will they.

But why do we always assume these are bad things? Since when has “different” been pejorative?

I’ll leave you to think on this:
Leap. Do it. Live, jump over the edge. Do it like it’s the last thing you’ll ever do. I guarantee you you’ll accomplish something you never thought possible.

It’ll be different.