Have you ever fallen spectacularly?

Have you ever fallen spectacularly? I have. I still remember as a high school student getting food in a very crowded cafeteria, slipping on a wet floor and falling flat on my butt with food scattered on the floor. Disaster.

And what did I do? I got up straight away, immediately picking things up off the floor so that as few people as possible would notice that I had indeed fallen. When people close by approached me, I would quickly brush them off by saying ‘I am okay’ with a pretend smile and skitter off. Inside, I was not okay. My butt was hurting, my heart was pounding, screaming with embarrassment and I hoped I could disappear off the face of the earth.

Since then, I have witnessed a good number of people fall down in front of others, all of whom reacting to the fall exactly the way I did - getting up straight away. We don’t even give ourselves a few seconds to pause and check in with ourselves and give ourselves a gentle rub. Instead, we get up pretending everything is okay and rush to the next activity.

One day as I was sitting at home, I heard a loud thud. I got up to find that a bird had unfortunately accidentally flown into our glass window and had fallen on our porch. Noticing that it had no visible injuries and was still breathing, I decided to sit with it.

This is a time lapse video of the situation.

If you had the patience to watch until the end, you would have seen the bird take off. Can you guess how long the bird actually sat between the fall and the final take off?

Over 33 minutes. During that time, it sat quietly and patiently, twitching and adjusting positions every few minutes until in the last few seconds, it hopped on its feet and took off. I was in awe of how plentiful the bird’s recovery time was, as if the bird completely succumbed to the circumstance it was in, allowing itself to rest to be completely well enough to fly before it did.

So why don’t we humans take our time after our fall? Most likely because we are embarrassed. Why are we embarrassed? Because falling = a mistake, a failure, a misfortune = bad. We are supposed to be walking properly. We shouldn’t be falling. What a judgemental and stifling construct we have built up for ourselves!

The truth is, we ALL FALL from time to time. There is no one on this planet who walks perfectly all the time - literally and figuratively. We fall short of our expectations, we make mistakes, we get into conflicts, we lose our way. However, in this reality, we have learned to care more about how we appear externally - normal, successful, on track - rather than tend to our internal needs after a fall.

What if we did the opposite and really let ourselves listen to our internal voices? Falling is hard. We might hear voices like ‘Wow, that sucked’, ‘That really hurts’, ‘I wish this didn’t happen to me’. If we really lean into these voices, we might allow ourselves a little more time, like the fallen bird, before we pick ourselves up again and move on. Rather than rushing to get up, still broken and worried about external judgments, we get up when our heart, unadulterated by others’ concerns, honestly says ‘I am ready.’ This is a form of self-compassion - providing ourselves the time, the care and the support we need as we pick ourselves up from a fall.

If each of us practiced self-compassion more, then the construct of fall= failure = bad may gradually dissipate, and shift into fall = only human, allowing us to create a society that is more accepting and kind. In the long scheme of our life, it is not about how quickly we pick ourselves up from a fall that counts, but rather, how many times we pick ourselves up that matters. For us to continue to get up after a fall, we need to listen to our internal voice and care for ourselves or we will wear down over time.

So next time when you fall, can you turn your attention inward and ask yourself what you would do if no one knew about your fall? Then take the time you need before you get up?

If you are curious to find out more about self-compassion practices, please check out here: https://www.choosinglifewithcourage.com/copy-of-practice-step-into-the-unce