“Never let me slip, cuz if I slip, then I’m slipping.” Dr. Dre – Nuthing But G Thang (1992)
Falling down, or failure, is a part of life. There’s an old Biblical proverb that says, “for a righteous man falls seven times, and rises up again…” This reinforces the fact that all of us, from the perfectionist to the free-spirited, are not in any way immune to making mistakes—or falling down. And yes, the most important thing about falling down is getting back up. You must get up, dust yourself off, and try again. But let’s be real here; falling down really sucks. No one wants to make those huge mistakes in the first place—let alone over and over again. Let’s take it a step further; some falls are permanent. Life is not always as easy as realizing you have fallen and simply deciding to get back up. Sometimes it’s a case of either you not being able to get back up, getting back up is a lot more difficult that you think, or even the time, energy, and cost of getting back up may not be worth it. Yes, that’s the reality of life. We all know that to a certain extent, falling down is inevitable. When you were an infant, how many falls did you have to endure before you finally mastered walking? So it is in life in general. Yet, I would venture to say that a significant amount of falls, and for some of us the majority of falls, were avoidable. Let’s examine this closer…
Generally, unless you are pushed or dropped, there are basically two ways to fall: slipping or tripping. Though they are pretty much the same thing, one usually trips over something (the front of the foot) and slips upon something (the heel). For the sake of simplicity, we will just label the act preceding a fall as “slipping.” Well, what does it mean to slip? To slip means to suddenly lose stability or the ability to balance oneself while standing, walking, climbing, running, etc. In terms of the act of falling, this is the crucial starting point. In other words, if you don’t slip--chances are--you are not going to fall. Unfortunately, this point is commonly forgotten when we look back over our lives and try to understand our mistakes and failures. Guilt, from within and those that surround us, often times compel us to focus so much on the mistake that we overlook or minimize the importance on what caused it. The quick and easy way to relieve ourselves of the guilt and shame is to quickly blame someone or something else. However, how many times have we done this and again find ourselves falling for and upon the same things? We even try to remove who or what we blamed and the same thing occurs again and again. I suggest that if we are to minimize our falls through understanding the cause—we much look past the falls themselves and intensely scrutinize when, how, and where we slipped.
However, the issue with slipping is that slips don’t always amount to falls. Therefore, when we slip and quickly recover our balance, we usual fail to note how that slip occurred. This is where the prelude to a huge fall commences. In other words, just because you slipped and recovered today, does not mean that you have sufficiently addressed the issue. You were fortunate to be able to keep from falling—but that does not mean you will be so fortunate tomorrow. If you do not stop and take a look at what made you slip—that same thing will have you fall later. In the immortal words of Dr. Dre; “Never let me slip, cuz if I slip, then I’m slipping.” Obviously, even he understood this concept.
To make this easy to digest, let’s use three rules your parents (mainly “mom”) had you live by in order to keep you from falling when you were a kid and see how we can apply these in a greater sense to our lives:
1. Watch Where You’re Going!
2. Slow Down And Stop Running!
3. Tie Your Shoelaces!
3. Tie Your Shoelaces!
These simple, but vital rules that were exclaimed multiple times into our ears (sometimes into one and right out of the other) throughout childhood can serve to help us better our lives and avoid many pitfalls as we can look at them from a different perspective.
Watch Where You’re Going
This is easier said than done. On the surface, this makes sense. No one wants to just wander into places of danger and failure. But every one of us has had that moment where we are sitting in a corner with our head in our hands, staring into space (sometimes accompanied by tears) asking ourselves, “How did this happen?” Sound familiar? Well, a better question to ask is, “How did I get here?” This is not as much of a question of geographic location as it is a question of how did you arrive into this situation. Yes, some stuff in life just happens. But coincidences are not normal. You know you messed up no matter how much you feign innocence, victimhood, and/or ignorance of the circumstances. Most of the time it is only you that gets yourself into these debacles--whether you saw them coming or not. How? Because you did not take the time to look at where you were headed. You let emotions cloud your judgment, strong desires cause you to disregard the true dangers associated with taking such risks, impatience compel you to act impulsively, or you trusted someone freely when you should have investigated the situation first. For some reason you let dreams, visions, anger, wants, etc. cause you to keep your head in the clouds to the point where you neglected to open your eyes and really take time to study the path you were travelling. In other words, you were so caught up with where you wanted to go and what you wanted to do that you kept yourself from seeing how you were getting there. Or even worse, you had no idea (or cared about) where you were going at all because you just wanted to enjoy the moment. Whether you realize it or not, we are always in motion—always headed somewhere—even if that somewhere is nowhere at all. We are either set in a purposed direction and at the helm of life trying our best to arrive at a specific destination or we are aimlessly floating around wherever the wind and waves of time and chance carry us. When you don’t watch where you are going, you are going to fall.
Watch where you spend your time. Watch who you spend your time with. Watch what makes you emotional. Watch who makes you weak and emotional when around. Watch what makes you disregard all personal rules and parameters associated with your behavior. There’s always that one friend that can convince you to go wild. When you two were in college, that was cool. But if you have a career and family now—he/she may need to be cut off—sometimes completely. I’m being real here. Your eyes are for watching and if you do not use them, you might as well wander in darkness. Take time out from the journey and really study where you are headed. You may think you are moving in one direction, but the results of your life and efforts (or lack thereof) may testify to something different.
Slow Down And Stop Running
We all remember one or both of our parents yelling this cautionary command to us as children (especially when we had a pair of scissors in our hands). Why were we running? Why were we in such a hurry as to ignore the possibility of falling and hurting ourselves—or even worse--breaking something that belonged to mama? Excitement, impatience, playfulness, etc. Being a child, we were accustomed to being dictated by our impulsive excitability, being heavily influence by our lack of patience, and of course virtually controlled by the innate desire to play at every given opportunity. Though this is a natural part of growing up and learning—it does not translate well into adulthood. How many decisions have we made in the midst of emotional excitement? Maybe we fell when we allowed the impulse for revenge to take over. Or perhaps the excitement of getting something new before we could really afford it convinced us that taking out a loan was a good idea. Young love is also often the culprit in manifesting excitability, impatience, and playfulness. Whatever the cause, such actions must be avoided or a fall is surely on the way. In life, we must take time to gauge our speed. Similar to travelling down the highway at high rates of speed, we could be rushing through life without really being aware of how fast we truly are going. Just as when we look down at the speedometer and adjust accordingly, we need to find ways to pace ourselves when making decisions. Again, if we have not fallen yet from living such a life—just wait a while. It is bound to happen. And please understand, desperate and hastily made decisions, with regards to temporary circumstances, can easily transform into something that brings lifelong consequences. The old saying, “Haste makes waste.” comes to mind here. Haste can make you waste time, energy, money, opportunity, health, relationships, etc. Please, before you endure a nasty fall, slow it down and take time to access the situation. Going too fast only decreases your amount of control over your life and increases the chances of you falling and crashing hard. Do not let impatience from within and the opinions and pressures of those on the outside force you to make rash decisions that you and only you must pay for—sometimes even with your very life.
Tie Your Shoelaces
Now this particular one may seem a little silly. Nonetheless, it is just as relevant and the two that preceded it. Let’s look at the purpose of shoestrings. They are there to help tighten a pair of shoes to your feet so that the protection and stability that the shoes offer are maximized and stay intact. Unless you are wearing slip-ons or sandals, a shoe without a shoestring actually becomes an impediment to walking—even a potential hazard. Go on, take your best sneakers and remove the strings and go play basketball or run for a half hour… You see what I am saying? Now, walking around with untied laces in your shoes isn’t the same thing as having no shoelaces at all, but as time goes on, the stability provided by the shoes decrease. This is surely something that your parents hated to see—you walking around with untied shoes. They would say, “Tie your shoelaces before you trip and fall and hurt yourself.” We all know that keeping our shoes tied provides the best amount of safety and stability when we walk in our shoes. Yet, all of us through laziness or carelessness have spent lots of time walking in such a way. A lot of us have a pair or two of those “lazy” shoes with the heel pressed down and the tips of the laces sticking out to the sides. They started out as a nice pair of shoes and ended up as raggedy slip-ons or “house shoes” over time because we got tired of crouching down and taking the time to secure the laces on them. Sure, we only wear these in the house or maybe on a quick trip to the grocery store or gas station. But God forbid we get robbed while in them because we cannot chase the thief for too long in these shoes.
In a similar way, there are things we do in life where we get used to skipping the necessary steps even when it involves important processes or decision making. Carelessness and laziness are reasons why we place our feet into untied shoes and trust our natural sense of balance to keep us from falling. But, when we walk around like this—we only increase our chances of falling and trusting too long in ourselves when we have the tools to better equip ourselves and the knowledge to better prepare ourselves is foolish. It’s far better to walk barefoot than to walk around with untied shoes. In the same sense, it’s better not to use something at all than to use it incorrectly. Also, don’t get accustomed to skipping steps and details in life—they will sooner or later be the cause of a major fall. Take time to do the small things even if you have been able to get by without doing so. Don’t skip steps no matter how insignificant they may seem. They are there for a reason—just like your shoestrings.
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