There are a number of phrases that cycle through as the subheader on my website.
But there’s one that is most important to me.
Walking is the process of controlled stumbling
I’ve watched a number of children learn to walk.
They stumble. They fall. They get up, and stumble forward again. They look ungainly as hell.
And then it all seems to click. They start walking.
Until they start growing again. And then they start stumbling again, as everything they thought they knew shifts too damn fast. Their friends with the cruelty of judgmental insecure youth mock every trip, every last imperfection in gait.
But eventually they start to pull it off, and make the stumbling look like something smooth and graceful.
But it’s not. It’s stumbling, just dressed up nice.
Physically, we never grow again the same way we did during adolescence.1 But emotionally, we will keep growing and changing, no matter how hard we cling to the end of history illusion 2.
And so will everyone else.
And all of us will fucking stumble.
You don’t get to choose if you (or someone else) stumbles.
You only get to choose whether you are the kind of person who laughs at them, or the kind of person who helps them up.
1 Though sudden weight gain or loss will do the same thing to you.
2 Explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-history_illusion Citation: https://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6115/96