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When life seems close to perfect,

or at least balanced, manageable,

like a house perched precariously on a high sea cliff,

not safe, but ok—

that’s when the storm hits, toppling the house,

the carefully juggled balance of problems and solutions,

life and work,

secrets and well-known facts,

impossible dreams and harsh realities.

Like a slap in the face from some higher power,—

God, nature, the laws of the universe—

the biting winds an attempt to put humans back in their place,

to remind them of their vulnerability,

the temporary nature of their success, their very lives.

A brilliant plan, if humans were not so stubborn, so certain of themselves and their worth,

so ready to fight back even when armed with only their fists and ingenuity.

So ready to pull themselves from the rubble of their ruined lives,

to find new solutions to their problems,

new lives to live,

new secrets to tell,

new beautifully impossible dreams.

A reminder of their mortality is a match dropped onto the dying coals of their ambition,

a strike to the lightning rod of their will to live,

prompting a “How dare you?”

Nothing heightens one’s sense of life like a (great fall)great fall from a high cliff

into churning water;

nothing tastes as clean, pure, perfect, as the first breath upon breaking the surface

after a long, arduous fight.