This is how I want to live my life: falling.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the stories we tell ourselves about … well, pretty much anything.

It’s how we make sense of things: overlaying objective information with some sort of subjective meaning that helps us sort and attach importance (or not) to it.

This is not a bad thing.

There is so much information coming at us incessantly, that if we didn’t find some way to dismiss at least some of it, we’d be swallowed up by it, never able to come up for air (you see why I added this photo of a wave :)). In some ways, our stories protect us and support us.

Sometimes, though, the stories weave together to form a narrative that is unhelpful, or that over time becomes so engrained we cannot even see it. “I am stupid.” Or “No one loves me.” Or even just “I will never be able to balance in headstand.”

A key truth about these narratives is that they usually are about things we can’t know or that attach to a single incident or moment in time. The other truth is that they often aren’t permanent but feel like it, or, sometimes, that they don’t matter at all.

Since I fell backwards doing headstand a couple of years back and hurt my hand, I haven’t tried to swing up without the safety of a wall. I tried again this past Friday in the park. And I fell.

But this time, it didn’t feel like a permanent condition, and it also didn’t hurt. And more to the point: it didn’t feel like the falling was pertinent to the experience. Somehow, over the years that have passed, I have moved from feeling permanently incompetent at headstand, to knowing it is about the process and not the end result.

When I walked in the door, covered in dirt, and my husband asked me if my pride was hurt, I paused. I hadn’t really thought of it. I was actually proud that it hadn’t hurt. Proud that I had dared to try.

This is how I want to live my life.