Don't Fall For It

Today, I would like to talk to you about falling. Falling is a serious matter. I still remember when my 92 year-old grandfather fell last year and broke a hip. The subsequent surgery and recovery almost killed him from exhaustion. Falling is the second most common work-related injury, and almost 400,000 people die from falling related accidents every year, not including the people who do it as a form of suicide. When an angry populace cannot get their hands on enough rope or swords or fancy-ass guillotines, what do they do with their shitheel rulers? They defenstrate them; throw their asses out of windows. Y'see? Falling has gotten so complex that we have different words to describe certain types of it. And how many times have you been woken up from a peaceful night's rest with that stupid freefall sensation? To be sure, falling is a most unpleasent experience, so why should falling in love be any different?

Falling requires three key ingredients: I'll refer to them as the trip, the fall, and the landing. The trip is the moment that instigates falling. It can be deliberate, such as stepping off the edge of a building or sticking your leg out in front of someone, or accidental, like just not paying attention to where you're stepping. To place this into the context of love, the trip is basically the thing that causes you to notice someone, be it a glance, a conversation, a hug, or anything else that makes you say to yourself, "damn..."

Next there is the fall proper. Technically, it is the space between the trip and the landing, so it could be argued that the fall does not actually exist; similar to how cold is merely the absence of heat, or dark being the lack of light. Semantics aside, this is also where we are the most helpless. We become victims of gravity. You are going down and there is not a thing you can do to change that. The paradox is that this is where the mind does the most work. Although usually brief in a temporal sense, the action appears to slow down and a thousand thoughts rush past. Conversely, you may not even be aware of what is happening until you're already on the ground. In all likelihood, the first and most common feeling is shock and fear. Our reptile brains take over and our first priority becomes survival. There is seldom time do anything other than reach out an arm and hope for the best. The unbridled passion you feel for your paramour sweeps you along whether you like it or not. This is the same cerebral cocktail that is responsible for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. You get that? Chemically, love is a mental disorder.

Finally, we land from the fall. The old maxim says that it's not the fall that kills you, it's the landing. That's true enough. Falling forever might mess with your inner ear a bit, but it probably wouldn't be too bad. There may be one way to fall, but there are a thousand ways to land. Of those, very few are pleasent. Unless you fall over something soft, you will be shocked, bumped, and quite possibly hurt. Do I have to keep drawing these love parallels, or can you figure out the landing part for yourselves?

I could tell you to just spare yourself and never fall in love, but I won't (I'm not that cynical). The truth is that no one is immune to falling. Everyone from babies to the elderly fall, although those two groups do seem to take up the lion's share of it; kind of a reversed bell curve if you think about it. It's part of the human condition. Does it suck? Most times, yes it does. In fact, most times, you'll probably get hurt, but rarely will it kill you. Just pick your ass up and watch your step to make sure that it doesn't happen again.