Old Motivational Posters, Curled and Held Tight by Scrunchies circa 1995

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you will land amongst the stars - Les Brown

I sit here in my passive, pitch-black silence inside this room of invading natural sunlight, surrounded by half-boxes of memories and lost dreams. The pick-up path leads somewhere new and as un-exciting as the last steaming plate of settlement and regret.

Which would you rather be? That person who successfully lands his feet firm on the dusty moon and has a chance to see if the dream was worth everything he worked for, just to find a grey and lifeless planet? Or the person who “misses, but lands amongst the stars,” a life whose failure and acceptance of something less is marked by the brilliance and mystery of a shining light?

Let time click beautifully by, let me sit here and relish in my empty solitude while I build up the courage to once again face the rising sun without the protection of these windows and filters. I didn’t land on the moon or settle amongst those stars, I am trapped in a seemingly vast free-fall simply waiting for the chance collision or a sudden surge of gravity to save me in this infinite space.

The stunning truth of just letting yourself fall is the sudden, painful impact of realization and self-reflection with a skid of renewed perspective. The stunning lies of a free fall are that you start to not notice anymore and resent the idea of returned firm footing.

Ideally the free fall is in space, as the beginning of this discussion proposed, and not in world-space. World space ends with a slow orbital tumble towards concrete or unforgiving waters. Life is round and limited by the laws set out by some unknown and unseen intention, and may or may not come down to simple geometry.

The question becomes, when is it too late to stop the inevitable?