I’ve Fallen And I Can Get Up

I am headed home from work—at 8am, because that is when I head home from work—and in an instant, I have gone from barreling across the street, backpack, shopping bag, and all, to being flat, face down, looking at a stranger’s shoes. “Are you ok?!” I hear, the speaker of those words sounding even more surprised than I at my trajectory. Thanks to multiple layers of thermal clothing, an enormous coat, and the gloves I usually forget to put on, I am virtually unscathed. And when, later, I feel bruises in places that surprise me, what strikes me the most is how very fast I went from being literally flat on my stomach on the ground to up and walking to catch my bus. The “are you ok?” man didn’t even have time to help me up, as I was on my feet—on the move, even—within seconds.

I am still a little shocked at my good fortune—to have fallen on a sidewalk, rather than in the street, to have caught the sidewalk edge in the light of day, rather than in the darkness, to have been so padded that I barely felt a thing, to have encountered multiple strangers willing to help if I needed. And more than anything, I am struck, and warmed, by the fact that, both physically and mentally, I am still quite full of the instinct to get up. I was on my feet without actually thinking “you have to get up.” I was walking without even pausing to consider any other scenario.

So, as I face what feel like challenges, in work, in parenting, in life, I can’t help but go back to that moment of falling and getting up. For, as long as I know that I can, and will, get up, it’s not nearly as scary to fall.