“What does the word life really mean to you?” Mr. Davis, my guidance counselor, asked me as I sat fidgeting in the uncomfortable chair beside his faux wood desk. “What do you mean by life?” I responded even though I was quite conscious that it’s illegal to answer a question with a question in literary law. “C’mon Brandon, I know you’re deeper than that, what do you think the meaning of life is? Why are you here on Earth? What are you going to do with yourself?” he immediately spat at me as if he’d been holding it in the whole time I was in there. “What’s life to me?” I asked myself without revealing my thoughts to Mr. Davis’ suspecting eyes. “Life is a tightrope,” I answered and continued,”…you can choose to walk and take the risk of falling into despair and depression or you can just sit down on the platform and watch the dust settle on a life you could’ve had.” “Wow, that was deep,” I said to myself as I congratulated my uncanny ability to invent meaningful answers to the most trying situations. “Could you explain yourself?” It was more of an order than a question but I disregarded the thought quickly and then proceeded in telling him about my newborn philosophy.

I told him everything. I told him how my mom and I used to fight everyday and that’s why I loved going to school so much- I could get away from the pain and sorrow. I shared all the meaningful experiences I had been acquainted with thus far in my life, like my first regatta when my boat took first place. I told him about the time we were vacationing in Sunriver, Oregon playing with my friends and a couple other guys we’d just met there at a rope swing along the Deschutes River. We were having a blast. There was nothing like jumping off the rock and being swung out twenty feet and then right at the exact moment, when you felt that your own momentum couldn’t take you any further or higher, you’d let go and fall for what seemed like an eternity, into the brisk current of the mighty Deschutes. The fun we were having was multiplied ten fold when one of the guys we’d just met hit the tree that the rope was tied to and fell into the water. We laughed, all of us did; we laughed so hard our sides hurt but then a new sound dictated over our sound waves of cackles. It was the kid screaming. See, what didn’t know but would soon find out is that when he hit the tree, a climbing nail as long as a ball point pen ripped into his leg tearing the flesh and muscle as the force of the swing carried him away over the water. “Heeeeeeeelp Meeeeeee!!!” he pleaded desperately from the water. For a few moments, I had no idea what to do but instinct must have kicked in because before I knew it, I’d told my friends to go get help and I was down at the shore wading into the water to him. I picked him up like he was an infant and carried him all the way to our canoes where a guy helped us cover the deep lesion that had look of a Hollywood war movie, but it was real. Then they took him away. For a few hours after that, everything seemed so surreal. I could’ve done so much differently. But then I realized something. I grasped that I’d done enough, he was alive. I later found out that his name was Michael and that he had to get 80 stitches to close the wound. Later on, months after that incident, as I tried every position possible to find a spot to ease into in the chair next to Mr. Davis’ desk, I struck upon the notion that I had crossed a tightrope that day.

I soon saw that my life is just one big tightrope with lots of little deformities in it that represent all the different circumstances that I was to face. I noticed that my life in faith was a tightrope too. I could choose to walk it with Jesus as my balancing pole or choose to attempt it alone. I found that things are much easier when one has his foundation on the rocks instead of the sand. In having faith in something far greater than I saw that it’s not so hard to be happy, to love and to forgive. Soon after, I learned that that’s all it took when I told my mom that I was sorry and that I loved her. There hasn’t been a big argument since. Looking back at that sunny day in the high desert of Sunriver, I smiled upon my action and the irony that today I’m a certified lifeguard. I grin whenever I think of my past now because I know that whatever hasn’t been great is something to learn from and that makes me all the happier to know that I’ve grown. Life has definitely been a tightrope for me and for a long time I was down on the ground struggling to get back up on the platform so I could start anew. I’m on the narrow tightrope today as if it were a narrow road and I’m walking it one step at a time, ever so slow, but always with a smile of peace and contentment for I know that with my faith as my balancing pole and my friends and family as my safety net, nothing can stop me from reaching the other side.

Fin.