The Tightrope

All at once I am on a tightrope. I no longer have feet next to one another, walking side by side. Instead, one foot ahead, one foot behind. The eyes turn toward infinity, where full seeing power coincides with blindness. The body is light, floating in doubtlessness. The breath, always, the breath. The body is warm, it sweats. One foot… Other foot… The arms waggle gracefully, dancing to faith. 

This is life now. I have forgotten even that I have forgotten what doubt is. I am on this tightrope and I walk and I dance. Faith holds me here, faith is the music I dance to. Not a fraction of second is given to doubt. It has long lost its power of temptation. It has been put where it belongs: It is meaningless, arbitrary, false. The devil has spoken too often, so I left him to speak to himself, and danced away…

I remember: I looked up to the sky one day, in the middle of the day, and thought to myself: if I flutter my arms, if I sustain my own weight in thought, if I breathe with my soul, I can get there—and stay there. And so I did. And not once did I fall! When I reached the sky I understood there is no reason to doubt, no reason to look down, no reason to think of falling. I understood what it means to stay. Stay.

The reasons for falling, which kept me on the ground before, were childish. Childish: the doubt that comes into reality simply because it can. An abuse of possibility! Childish: throwing tantrums if I did not listen to it! As if I had the obligation to think of falling, when I am free to not think of it. Childish: arrogantly claiming to be better than the alternative, simply to steal my attention to itself. It takes only the smallest amount of doubt to fall, no matter from what height.

I believe, I believe!

    With the same perseverance, same arbitrariness, same frequency with which they doubt.

I stay!

     I no longer see reasons not to.

I have always believed!

     I am letting myself be: I ceased interrupting my soul’s conversation with things.

I sing!

The tightrope taught me to sing… Inside my head, behind my eyes, my voice also balances itself on the same rope, one foot, other foot, eyes to infinity, dancing to faith.

Singing is believing. 

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