Living on the Edge

I spent this morning trying to fix a loose shelf in my kitchen. It’s a small thing, but it has been wobbling for weeks, making me nervous every time I set a glass down. As I tightened the last screw, I thought about how much energy we spend trying to make our lives feel solid and level. We want firm ground beneath our feet. We want to know that if we lean on something, it will hold. But then I look at the world and see how often we choose to build in the most impossible places. We perch our homes on cliffs and our dreams on shaky foundations, finding a strange kind of comfort in the height and the risk. Maybe we aren’t meant to be perfectly steady all the time. Maybe there is a specific kind of grace in holding on, in finding balance exactly where the ground decides to fall away. Does the danger make the view feel more like a reward?

Jana Z has captured this feeling perfectly in her photograph titled Hang in There!. It shows exactly how we find our place in the world, even when the edge is steep. What does it feel like to you when you look at these homes?