I Don't Wanna!

Janet makes me do things I don't want to do. And no, I don't mean that she has me stealing other kids' lunch money or is making me do her algebra homework for her. For instance, the other day she wanted to show off our shekere skills to her friend and she asked if I was ready to throw the shekere, and I was like, no I'm too scared!, but she started tossing shekeres around anyway, and you know what? I caught them every time and it was actually really fun. And last night we were working on solos and I was like, oh I don't have a matsuri solo down yet canweworkonsoloslater? And of course she wouldn't let me get away with that so we traded solos around, and I figured since we were noodling around, why not ask how she does spins, because I'm so bad at spins, and so scared of spins, so she gave me some spinning technique pointers and I hope to throw one or two of them in my solo. She told me this story of how one time she did a spin and wound up on the other side of the stage, so that made me feel better, because that's where I'll probably end up anyway.

Ok, so maybe it's not that she makes me do things I don't want to do, but she makes me do things I don't think I can do. So, here's a story. Several years ago, I went on a retreat/group bonding thing at a ropes course. If you've never been on a ropes course before, basically they harness you up and have you move over different obstacles, like on tight ropes or the like, usually high up in the trees. I think the idea is that people are afraid of heights and/or afraid of falling, so everything is mental, because you're not reallly gonna fall because of the harness. Anyway the last task was to climb what amounted to a telephone pole, stand on the (purposely) rickety, dinner plate-sized platform on the top, and jump and catch a trapeze. It doesn't sound that hard, but it was 30 feet up in the air, and while I'm not particularly scared of heights, I am scared of falling. I remember thinking that logically I just need to try to jump and catch the trapeze and if I don't then, eh, I'm harnessed up. That's easy to say when you've got two feet planted solidly on the ground, because when I got up there, I kept hesitating, and the whole logic thing wasn't working, because I was awfully high up there, and I was thinking, I know I can do this, so why then can't I do this? Everyone of the ground was like, come on! You can do it! And the trapeze was so far away, and the platform was very rickety, and did the ground just move? Long story short, I jumped, missed the trapeze, the harness caught me, and I did it. Afterward when they were unhooking me and getting the next person harnessed up, the ropes course guide pulled me aside and gave me a 10-second recap of what she saw, and basically she said that I know I can do it, but I hesitate and that I just need to take the risk. Not just on the ropes course, but in my life in general. What she said made a lot of sense to me, and I've never forgotten it. It's just that not until recently have I really tried to take those risks.

So what if I fall? I mean, isn't it the falling part that makes the story interesting? So what if I spin uncontrollably off stage? I'll find my way back. So what if I drop and break a shekere? I'll learn how to glue it back together. I need to stop thinking that falling is a scary thing. And I guess I'm really lucky that there is someone out there willing to throw stuff at me and send me spinning off into orbit. Makes for a more interesting blog anyway.