The art of letting go, or what I learned from trapeze

There’s something about doing what terrifies me that makes me feel absolutely invincible. It could be just receptors flying but it also could be something else—the core within me that shakes when I climb a ladder thirty feet.

I furiously put chalk on my hands just twenty seconds before, and already I doubt the efficacy just fifteen feet up. I’ve always wanted to do swinging trapeze. There’s a lot of things I do that are intentionally chosen to push my boundaries and make me feel uncomfortable. Improv, dance, speaking, performance, trapeze. In truth, just executing these things is only the first act.

Leaping from the ledge of the trapeze proved not to be so hard for me. The ropey net near the floor made me feel better, my grip on the wide, swinging bar made me feel safe. As I swung the length of the gymnasium, instructors called out for me to lift and wrap my legs over the bar. Hands still on the bar, I swing to bring my legs over—my first ride on the trapeze and things are going alright.

With legs hinged on the bar, swingers are then supposed to release their grip and hang their body towards the ground, arching their back to the opposite wall. Hands off is the second act.

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In the last quarter of my life I’ve sought skills and thrills, things to make me scared, and experiences to keep me searching for one epiphany after the other.

It’s an epiphany like the ones that come in mid-air, unable to make your hands loosen their grip from the bar. And as much as my brain could tell my body one thing, my body just would not respond. It’s unfamiliar, the strange and literal paralysis of fear.

My muscles braced, rigid like my concrete plans and morning routine. Tense. I live in a world of soothing preparation amidst a desire to flow. The fluidity in my life almost never comes— a dance that flirts with passion, a presentation that barely completes without self-doubt.

In trusting myself and the people around me enough to let go, I could one day enjoy the moment or the ride of a swing.

Letting go isn’t about staying on or falling, because that’s the result and the result isn’t right now—or at least that’s what the epiphany told me as my fists clung to the bar. I stayed hooked to it even as the instructors shouted a couple more times, until finally racking my soul and releasing my body downward.