A few weeks back, I saw a squirrel fall from a tree.
Have you ever seen such a thing?
There was the rustling of the leaves, then the snap of a branch, then the disconcerting thunk of a small soft thing hitting the sidewalk at the park.
My daughter was in her stroller and I was beside her, on a bench. We both looked away from the person practicing on a slackline in front of us, to follow the sound.
Stunned for a moment, the squirrel scrambled to get up onto its feet and then darted around, confused for a moment, before bounding off into the grass.
I was sort of shocked, but tried to play it cool for my child's sake. (She is hugely empathetic for all living creatures who "go boom.")
"Look, even squirrels fall sometimes!" I said, probably too cheerfully.
SQUIRRELS CAN FALL? I shout-thought.
In the weeks since the squirrel incident, I've tried to make sense of what we saw; I've tried to glean something from witnessing the surprising results of a misstep, the impersonality of gravity. But nothing much is bubbling to the surface.
Nothing is impossible?
Balance is never a foregone conclusion?
What doesn't kill you might not make you stronger, might just temporarily stun you?
Nah. The best I can come up with is this: the turntable plate breaking while microwaving popcorn.
No fault. No reason (besides basic physics, of course). No deeper meaning or proof of shortcoming.
In other words: a perfect fail.
There isn't anything that isn't supposed to happen.
There's just what happens.
And there's how we react to what happens.
What comes up for you when you consider this paradigm? Leave a comment below.