A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog post in another page I manage, expressing my thoughts after my son Aleks, had a serious fall.
Recently, he became one of my photoshop projects for a photography course I am completing. Here, I post that blog - as real to me today as it was just over two years ago - along with the photo composite I did as one of my project submissions.
The Fall
It wasn't the falling that was the problem; it was when the falling stopped. That's when the friction set in. No elastic potential energy to reduce the shock - just a cold hard THUD. When he fell, you fell too. You felt it in your gut, but mostly you felt it in your heart. The impact tore it to shreds. You are not sure when it will fully recover because even though he has stopped his falling, you haven't.
His face has lost the black bruised and beaten signs of trauma; and his eyes are no longer blood-stained and sad, but he hears no more from one young ear and his brain fights to locate his body in space like a worn out gyrocopter. It also struggles to think.
It wasnt the falling that was the issue - it was when he landed, you see. He perhaps should have just kept falling - and never landed; forever in that space between "where am I?" and "this isn't going to end well".
Right then at that moment - that very moment of knowing, everything falls to a screaming, kinetic energy-filled halt. And just like that he is your 9 month old again, falling down a flight of stairs; grazing his face and knees for the first of many times as he negotiates his way into walking; screaming tears of pain as you bundle him up into your arms to kiss his wounds well again. You set him straight, back on his feet and off he toddles ... until the next time.
Landings are over-rated. Newton's Apple probably had no complaints, but when he fell, his head broke and his brain bled a bit in protest of the landing. If only there was no gravity - or maybe if earth had the gravity of the moon - maybe then the landing would have been permissible.
Maybe then you would not still be falling.