We cast off our skins and descend, soaring through the air on wings of bone. We flay ourselves through motion, airborne dust and sharp wind pummelling lithe bodies. There is joy in the madness, in the oncoming threat. It is inevitable. Someday we will land. someday we will be no more.
Come, scared child. Take my hand in yours, warm as it is, and bear witness to my salvation. I lunge, I dart, and my feet are free of the dull concrete surface, bound no more by the remedial chains of unfilled potential.
Come, scared child. Together we will become more, we will take the leap together, we will touch the sun. Icarus was not a warning, but a promise, a reminder that self belief is the most important factor, that without trying there is no purpose.
Come, scared child. Come once more, forever and always. For the hands on your back that buoy you as they lift and pull as they clap you. The encouragement of others is a disease, not to be desired, but a plague to be hated. It breeds ego and ego breeds concerns and concerns are what will anchor you to the ground. So come. Fall with me.
The view is magnificent, worth the climb on its own, perhaps. But without motion, it is as meaningless as a pretty painting, as a lost book, as an unworn shoe. But in the descent, there is madness, and madness is life and creativity. Can you be said to matter without the threat? Can you be said to be living if you will never die?
Come and fall with me. Perhaps your wings will unfurl and you will cast off this shell, washing over the world between neon lights, dancing in the stars. Perhaps the chaotic buffeting winds will howl in your ears and you will see the truth of the world for what it is, will understand the crackling electricity of the lightning skies, the pulsing ooze of sounds from closed windows, sights behind closed doors.
We reject the ground, reject the climb, reject those who push us up to do great things because we are great things and it is our choice on how to occupy ourselves. We fall with a purpose, with intent. We fall because we know that some of us will fail to fly, that some of our wings will creak and break and snap, rusty from disuse, and the ground will loom ever close, the moment that ends a life sped up. Will we see our lives between our moments? Will seconds become hours, information compressed, a purpose unspent?
But I cannot fear because your hands find my back and my arms and I'm carried aloft. Because we number in the billions and we will always catch each other. Come on, jump with me. It's okay. I think your wings will be gorgeous.