“If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”
— Ray Bradbury

We know when we are facing a cliff. And surely we know when we’ve fallen off the edge of one. Cliffs are big, life-changing moments. We know there’s no going back to the way things used to be. We simply have to navigate the cliff as best we can and try to survive the encounter. We know the alternative outcome is eternal.

We face cliffs all the time. I’m currently watching a couple of people in my life dealing with the massive cliff of growing frail. They felt it was sudden, we saw it coming for years. We don’t always see the cliff we’re moving towards until there’s no getting around it. We reach a point of no return in life. Deal with the cliff.

There’s another kind of cliff, isn’t there? It’s the cliff that we choose to leap off on our own. It’s quitting a job to chase a dream. It’s sailing off for unfamiliar waters. It’s doing something so audacious that all of our friends think we’re crazy, even as they quietly envy us for trying.

Intellect has a way of holding us back. We think too much sometimes. Sure, it may keep us alive in times of trouble, but we ought to ask, are we really living? Or simply going through the motions until we reach some cliff we somehow never saw coming, despite all the signs?

Developing the courage and strength to leap begins with smaller cliffs successfully navigated. Be bold more often, and see where it leads us. Ratchet up the size of the cliff and leap into a few chasms now and then, just to see how it goes. That’s not being ridiculous—keep the limbs, reputation and healthy marriage intact, but step beyond some of those expectations previously established for ourselves and see where it leads.

The point is, the cliffs are coming for us one way or the other. Why not choose the cliffs we’d love to leap off, just to see how the view is? Maybe we’ll soar, or maybe we’ll crash to the bottom and have to climb back up again. At least we’ll have learned a thing or two about ourselves in the face of cliffs.