The fall can hurt when you're cruising an emotional high...

Over the past several months, I have seen several emotional highs: passing comps, taking a life-altering trip to Guatemala, submitting a couple of pieces for publication, and working on a new relationship. Many of these "highs" have had counterpart "lows": not getting enough professional work accomplished, seeing a publication rejected, and ending a relationship. As a good friend, and several "life philosophers" have been all to ready to advise: its not so much about the fall, but the getting up that counts. Recently, I have been feeling a sense of real personal peace with my attempts to get back up when life has knocked me down. Thanks, Tom Petty. I find myself smiling for no apparent reason as I run along my paths here in Athens, attempting to make peace when the waitress is about and hour-and-a-half late with my party's food order, and thinking that there is some truth to the fact that life can and often does seem to matter a lot more when you have someone with whom you want to share the mundane and often stupid things that happen to make up our everyday existence.

My most recent stupid event: Running along, as most of you know I do, I cross Baxter (in a break of insanely busy traffic) and assume the nice sidewalk pace I had set before crossing. It was just a great afternoon for running. I had just finished reading a book that I had been putting off reading because I had to submit a review for it the next day or so and I had just finished laughing (out loud) about a very funny scene in the Charlie Brown Christmas movie when Sally writes a letter to Mary Christmas (a.k.a. Mrs Clause) praising her for her feminist leanings and keeping her surname. As I resumed pace, it happened: my right shoe gets hung in an expanded left shoe lace hoop and down I go. In my own words that particular members of my family find quite funny, "I just went down." Clearly not my first fall, there's a popularized saying about it for a goat's sake, I knew how to handle it although this fall was rather abrupt and unexpected. Left knee catches the full force (still swollen, not broken, I think) hands catch the rest of the momentum as I roll of to the side and into a fraternity house's side lawn. Well, there you have it: the fall can hurt when you're cruising an emotional high.

Thankfully, I learned the lesson a couple of years back that we humans are just that: human. We HAVE to laugh at ourselves because if we don't, we risk allowing that weakness to define and conquer us when those extremely evil people (you know em') discover that fear. Well there I was sitting on me duff (no bleeding) and yet as proof of this emerging new mindset I thought to myself, you know, this could have been much worse. What if I had tripped up in the street only to meet the front of a Dodge Durango or, more likely in this town, some extremely hefty RangeRover with an equally hefty-footed driver? Maybe a little less severe but still painful, what if I had stabbed my keys through my hand? I picked myself up, hobbled home, reflecting on the lesson learned: sometimes you cut your losses, other times you throw away the overstretched shoestrings.

Surprisingly, the emotional high has not disappeared. For those who have experienced the past week/few months with me (friends scattered from here to various places in AL to Memphis to the UK to the Grand Canyon and Dallas/Fort Worth) you know I think I've found something. Not that happiness is to be discovered only in another person and then, that's it, problems solved. For me its all about interaction, change, and just being still long enough to know who you are, who she is, and who you are together. Point in case: we've laughed over my fall on Baxter (only after she said, "hey are you ok? really, are you ok?") and I realized that it is that deep connection that sort just happens when you aren't paying attention that binds two people together; that makes you sit back in awe; and, sometimes, loose your breath...at least for me anyway. So even when the fall from an emotional high can be quite painful, the good thing about connecting with the person that aided the creation of the high (if you are as fortunate as I've been lately) is that they'll be there to recreate it with as simple a question as, "hey, how's your leg today?"

TCH