Such Great Heights.

So, this image was posted on reddit the other day with the title “Would you?”:

Apparently, that’s La Casa del Árbol in Ecuador. My first, initial thought was “nope, nope, nope!” but as I looked at the picture some more and actually thought about it, I realized how incredibly breathtaking and unbelievable it must feel to experience such a rare thing. I began to think about the games played in the school yard swingers, where you would pump your legs and try to get as high as you could. I would often try to go so high that I could imagine myself letting go and, instead of coming back down on the grass like we would often do, I would sail right over the roof of my one-story school building. I started to imagine swinging as high as I could there, letting go, and some how, instead of plummeting to a likely death, growing wings and soaring, opening myself up to incredible possibilities that would have never been possible if I hadn’t gone and taken a chance.

Obviously, actually doing this would be crazy, but let’s allow ourselves to turn that into a metaphor for the purposes of this post, shall we? A prospect like that is a stomach-dropping, adreniline-pumping exercise in insanity, but isn’t that how most risks we take should be? And the key word there is “take.” It’s one thing to stand on a precipice, looking over the edge, and another thing entirely to be leaping forward from it. But if we’re forever just looking, that’s all we’ll ever be doing. Looking. Watching. Letting the world happen around us. But if we take the risks, that’s when we’ll truly be able to soar. It might seem crazy. My initial reaction when I saw that swing was that I wouldn’t go near it in a million years. Then I thought about it and I realized that, if I didn’t get on that swing, I would never experience the rush and the beauty and the rarity of that experience.

Would I? Yes. It might take me a while to get there, but I don’t think I’d give up the opportunity for anything. And that, my friends, is something you can take with you to any height.