We are our choices.
- Jean-Paul Sartre
Last week, up a ladder, almost to the top of the scaffolding, I found myself paralyzed by terror. The images of my own body tumbling down to the ground below weren’t constant, or even all that clear upon reception if I’m being frank, and yet there was something glaringly apparent about the whole situation.
This isn’t right for me, I gritted through my teeth.
This isn’t right for me, I say.
And so I knew, I suppose, before I let on, that I was destined to fail here. I mean, if fail is really the way you need to look at it. Yes, it’s true, I wasn’t going to do what I had told my boss, Mel, I would do. I wasn’t going to conquer what I had swore to myself I could conquer. There was soffit to be scraped and cleaned (a lot of it) on this lovely old home. Then a coat of paint was to be added. And the pay was good! And I’m not the sort of man who can afford to refuse good pay, now am I?
But here I was, at the moment of truth, faced with shimmying my big body off of the high ladder and up onto the narrow scaffolding. In order to do such a thing, I would have to limbo below a protruding down spout at the same time that I went from ladder to platform. Only then, after achieving my desired position, could I allow my breath to return and take in the vast distance between the yard way below my bones up in the sky.
I had just watched Mel (whose house this was) scurry up the ladder and proceed out onto the scaffolding with the carefree movements of a monkey who has spent his entire life in the treetops. And he is 70 years old! So why was I panicking? What part of me couldn’t muster up the same courage or machismo or whatever it is that allows a fellow to do a thing even when he is terribly frightened of it?
Listen, if I was to tell you, with utter humility, that I was afraid for my life, what springs to your mind? Do you chuckle at the prospect of the sight of it all? How much would you have given to be able to tune in (live stream!) to Serge Bielanko shitting his pants up a ladder at 9 in the morning on a Monday. What if I fell?! Would you want to see that!? Would you simultaneously feel bad for me but also be overcome with a sense of thrilling excitement as you watched my potato body (decked out in my woodland camo Army jacket) literally bounce on the patio stones?
Or would you simply grab your popcorn and settle in, an undecided voter on election night, tuning in to watch the chaos unfold?
None of these possibilities were lost on me.
The mind is a ridiculous weapon more often than not. To what extent might a runaway imagination like my own go to connect the dots from the calm of right now to imminent tragedy just ahead?
The short answer is this. That bastard will stop at nothing until I am stone cold dead.
The climb up the ladder to the second story of the scaffolding wasn’t bad. Everything seemed secure enough. But like any person who has ever found themselves ascending clanky rungs only to suddenly find themselves immersed in the surrealistic nightmare of watching the earth shift as they tipped slowly/ horrifically back towards solid ground: I, of course, told myself blatant lies. Of course I did! Plain as day, I convinced myself to do what I didn’t want to do in order to cross two necessary finish lines.
A) The line between making money and not making money.
and
B) The line between not looking and feeling like a spectacular namby-pamby and actually becoming the Uncontested Emporer of All Namby-Pambies everywhere.
People climb ladders and balance on boards far above the rock-hard ground all the time!, my brain screeched at me.
Every car ride is certain death when you think about it!
That’s what they all probably said to themselves though.
The ladder seems fine! Trust the process!
Then that final impact shucked their vertebrae like Happy Hour clams at some beer joint on the lagoon.
_____
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
-Helen Keller
_____