Tightrope

Recently, I learned of a documentary that chronicles one man's tightrope walk between the World Trade Center Towers in 1974.  Just thinking about doing something like this makes me shudder.  Lately,  I've had trouble balancing on solid ground.  Despite the tightrope skills this man brought with him, I'm convinced he was more than a little crazy.  Wouldn't you have to be to risk what would be certain death for the vast majority of mere mortals?

As I begin my daily tightrope walk, trying to balance all the pieces of my life, trying to decide what's important and what is not, a small part of me envies this man.  Not the walk itself but the desire to undertake it.  I would love to jump out of bed in the morning, ready to meet the day, enthusiastically embracing the challenges that lie ahead.  I may not be crossing a tightrope between the old Twin Towers but balancing the details of my life is my own personal feat of "daring do".

Come to think of it, my new tightrope idol may shrink in fear at what I have to undertake to safely cross my day.  We were never meant to swap places or envy each other.  I view his life from a great distance.  Hurtling back through time and space, he walks high above me while I walk on the street below almost a country away.  I do not see him there, nor he me. 

My current knowledge of him comes from an idle conversation.  The tightrope walker captures my imagination while remaining a complete mystery to me.  I am even more a mystery to him.  A mystery he doesn't know existed, especially back in 1974.  I like being a non-existent mystery.  I find freedom at the heart of this thought.  I am suddenly a non-existent mystery that encompasses all.  I climb into this thought and close the door behind me.

Today, at 2:13 p.m.   I stumble into the spot where truth resides.  I am not a separate self walking a tightrope between impossibly tall buildings, nor am I a separate self balancing the pieces of my life.  I am everything and I am nothing.  I am tightrope and towers.  I am children's schedules and dirty laundry.  My life does not define me.  It is merely the stage that laughs and cries its way across the world.  It gives my spirit human form.  It allows me to make life tangible while my spirit floats on air between the towers. 
Tightrope walker and I are one.