Finding The Limits

Finding one's limits is always a painful thing.

They always seem to come in the midst of soaring in midair into a brilliant sunrise.  We have convinced ourselves - or perhaps more accurately, have allowed ourselves to become convinced - that we have read all the signs correctly and interpreted the omens favorably.  Things are ours for the taking.  The sky is truly the limit and the wind is beneath the wings.

And then, like Icarus, the sun melts the wax on our wings and we begin to plunge.

The ground rushes up rather quickly in such situations, leaving us flailing our wings in midair in a sort of vain disbelief as we fall.  Surely this is wrong.  We asked all the right questions.  We read the signs aright.  We carefully examined our options and felt this was the best path forward before we fully engaged our wings.  We examined the limits and were convinced that we had interpreted that this was the time to move beyond them.

Frantically reviewing our thoughts, we continue to try to review everything that led us up to his point - until we are interrupted by our bodies smacking into the ground.

If we are fortunate, we have hit ground which is yielding to ourselves.  We may slowly sit up, seeing if we have any broken bones (bruises, lacerations, and cuts are assumed), then wince our way to our feet.  The sky looks awfully far away right now as we try to brush ourselves off and perhaps think over what just happened - and how we could have read things so marvelously awry.

We look up, try to read the signs and wind and sun - and then slowly begin limping our ways towards where the limits are apparently directing us to go.  The birds fly over our heads as we creak along, mocking us with a song of the air as we slowly shuffle our way to the dirge of gravity.