Boxes and other leaps of faith

"Risk verses reward", is what he said. 
I don't do that anymore because I might get hurt is what he meant.

We're talking about box jumps.  We're talking about standing still, feet flat on the ground and leaping upward, landing on a platform, then jumping or stepping back down quickly and doing it again and again, then again and again.  It's not hard, but it is.  It's scary and it's exhilarating, challenging, but it's also maybe a little silly.   I always feel as though I might get hurt and this past time I did, but not that badly.  In fact I felt it happening, I felt myself become injured and I pretended that it didn't bother me one bit.   I kept going, knowing that I was less capable, less strong, more fragile, but I leapt anyhow.   I compensated for what happened to me for the rest of the day and then at night, I put ice on the blue streak across my knee for a bit, until the ice became more inconvenient then the pain itself.  Little steams of water trickled down my leg from the melting sac of ice and the case over the pillow upon which I'd rested became slightly damp and so those things mattered more then the bruising skin, swelling, tender muscle that is in fact a part of me, my own flesh and blood.

What is wrong with this picture?  
Wait a minute - 
Whats wrong with this person?

I don't often heed the common sensical.
I don't learn easily about risk and reward.
Not when it comes to myself.  

I'll look both ways five times.  I'll listen with my good ear for the distant murmur of a possible engine running 1/2 mile away.  I might as well go ahead and do some sort of scientific finger lick, put my pointer up into the air to see if theres any perceptible shift in the wind, indicating a vehicle might be coming any time soonish, before I let my children cross the street between us and the lake up in the sleepy mountains where we spend some of our time.   The care I take allowing others to cross the road, the amount of times I wash berries before we consume them, the sunscreen I apply, the flea deterrent on the dogs, the hospital corners of our beds, organic this, gluten free that - I am so careful.  I am so concerned.  I am so preventative with others and with things I cannot actually control, and yet...

I will always, always throw my heart and sometimes my body out there, time and time again, ignoring risk vs reward.   I don't stop when it begins to hurt.  I pretend that it doesn't even.  I carry on.   And in all this carrying on, I make sure that if the ice on my injury should start to cause some kind of mess, well then, the mess gets attended to while the injury goes - what?  Goes ignored, untreated, unnoticed?    No.    The injury just stays and becomes part of me and moves forward with me to the next box I jump and the one after that and then the next and the next and the next.

Sometimes it takes almost 50 years to understand what you were born knowing.

Risk verses reward

Self preservation

Love yourself... at least as much as you love others and heal before you move on to the next box, heal before you go ahead and leap some more.  
Take not the issues of your past forward.
Be a better box for others to jump.

 Be the ONE you love...