People fall

all the time; as a matter of fact, human beings learn to walk by falling first

as if mandated by God for us to learn how to fall

at the beginning of life, so we can then become good at picking ourselves up;

besides, there exists an art to falling,

a way to fall that compliments gravity, that does not

give it insult, a way to fall that won't be crippling, a way that

mitigates pain; it becomes a rhythm that lives in our bones, the way a fall is absorbed

by our bodies; we slowly, consciously or not, become adept at the fall;

at some point we learn to avoid using

appendages like the arm or hand when descending

at certain angles—statistics dictate, we break our arms and hands

the most in the midst of attempting

to break a fall—more perilous for the elderly; once the hips go, life, it is said, is soon to follow,

like a bee, losing its stinger, or a husband mourning his wife; however, falling transcends

the physical and lives in the mind, sets up shop in the soul; the fall from grace

onto disgrace can be far more pernicious than falls of the flesh, for

the psyche constitutes the self and our capacity to recover

is dependent on our learned behaviors

of getting back up; convalescence is then a habit of the will

and not of circumstance; once acquainted with the fear of the drop

and the realization of its impermanence, its grip over you will fade

and you will then learn to befriend the inevitable:

people fall

all the time.