The Gravity of Being Young

Dear traveler, I have been thinking about the way we learn to fall. When we are small, we are taught that gravity is a law, something that demands we stay tethered to the earth. But there are those rare, defiant moments when we decide to negotiate with the air instead. It is a strange kind of bravery, isn’t it? To trust that if you push off hard enough, the world will wait for you to land. We spend so much of our lives trying to keep our feet planted, terrified of the space between the ground and our soles. Yet, the most honest parts of us are often found in that suspension, in the heartbeat of uncertainty where you are neither here nor there. It is a beautiful, reckless gamble to believe that you can master the momentum of your own life, even for a second. Do you remember the last time you felt that weightless, when the only thing that mattered was the arc of your own movement?

Jose Juniel Rivera-Negron has captured this feeling perfectly in his image titled The Skater Boy. It reminds me that we are all just trying to find our balance in the middle of a busy world. Does this moment of flight make you want to jump, or does it make you want to hold on tighter?