How badly to do you want what you say you want?
I had a friend tell me about something that she wanted that had still not come to fruition.
“Have you considered whether or not you really want it?” I asked her.
Often when we don’t get what we wish for, we find that deep inside we either don’t really want it, or aren’t willing to do what it takes to achieve it.
When I was a young girl, I went with my mother to visit a woman who had been a trapeze artist in the circus. I don’t remember how my mother knew her, or why we had visited her that day, but I remember being fascinated by all the photographs that were framed on the wall and in dozens of 
photo albums of the woman flying through the air.
I sat attentively as she told us about her life. She spoke of traveling – and I really liked to travel – and she told us about how it felt to fly free in the air – and I loved the idea of flying. In fact, as a child I often dreamed I was flying. What a thrill it would be, I thought, to actually do that.
During the visit, the woman took us out on her back deck to look at the trapeze that was in her backyard. The yard sloped down towards a lake and I thought that she must have quite a view during her flight. I was intrigued and said, “I want to fly on the trapeze.”
The woman was thrilled and agreed to tutor me the following week. It was all set. It was perfect. I would come back in a few days and fly on the trapeze – soaring like an eagle between the rings.
The anticipated day finally arrived for my first aerial lesson. I doubt that I slept much the night before for I was so excited about the idea of taking the great leap. First she showed me how to catch and release the rings with a pair she held in her hands. She spent a great deal of time with her instruction, but all I could think about was flying. Let’s get on with it, I thought.
Then, trembling with excitement, I followed her and my mother outdoors. My mother, who was notoriously afraid of heights, stopped at the top of the path. I handed her my sweater and then ran after the woman down the path that led to the ladder.
As we stood at the bottom of the ladder, I looked up — all way up at the platform and said, “That looks like an awfully small platform.”
“Oh, it is,” she said.
I began my climb. It was difficult climbing up the smooth rounded metal steps, that seemed spaced quite far apart. Holding onto the metal hand rails as I pulled my body straight up with each step, took great effort.
After a few steps, I began to feel a bit less enthusiastic than when I had started of this journey. I stopped my climb, looked up at the platform that was still very high above my head and said, “You mean that I have to climb all the way up there?”
“Why of course,” she said, “we have to get to the platform.”
I realized then that I had not given very much thought about the height. I had thought only about the thrill of soaring, not the climb of the tall ladder, or the small platform that awaited me or the physical danger.
As I climbed, I looked up and realized that the platform had not gotten much larger as it hung out there in thin air. I again paused my climb and looked out over the tree tops and realized that I was higher than I had ever been in my life. I took another step up, then stopped.
“What’s wrong?” asked the woman who was climbing behind me. I froze to the ladder and clung for dear life. I was afraid to climb further up and I was afraid to climb down. But, I was also afraid of disappointing the woman and my mother.
“I can’t do it,” I said.
“But you haven’t even tried,” she said.
“I can’t do it. I can’t climb all the way up there,” I said with tears in my eyes, “I’m sorry, I just can’t.”
The woman let out a sigh and started her climb back down the steps. It took everything in me to take that first large step down, but when I finally reached the bottom rung I was ever so thrilled to be on solid ground.
The woman looked at me, started to say something, thought the better of it, and stormed off into her house. I guessed that she felt that I had wasted her time and dashed her hopes.
My mother stood off to the side of the path watching me. I walked over to her, “Sorry to disappoint you, Mom.”
She let out such a laugh it startled me. Handing me my sweater, she then hugged me tight and said, “I was afraid you were really going to do it.”
“You mean you didn’t want me to do it?”
“Heavens no. I was a nervous wreck.”
“Then why did you let me?”
“I was going to stop you and was just about to when you stopped climbing. I didn’t want to tell you couldn’t do it, but I prayed that you would come to your senses on your own.”
And then it hit me. I had thought I had wanted to fly the trapeze. But I had not realized what it took to physically do that. This gave me a new appreciation for the woman’s courage and her strength. The reality of it was that it was certainly not for me.
I think about that trapeze sometimes when things don’t pan out in my life. And I have to wonder that perhaps the attaining of that something that I thought I wanted, was not aligned with my highest good. Or perhaps it was not what I really wanted deep inside. Or perhaps I didn’t want to climb another ladder… I simply wanted to fly.
