Last spring, we participated in a meditation workshop with a small group of relatives, friends and cousins. Our meditative practices take place in the morning and the afternoon is devoted to free activities: silent walking in full consciousness, or a walk in the middle of chatter. All this in a beautiful holiday village, at the edge of a lake lost in a large forest, with beautiful trampolines in the corner.
One of our daughters is traveling one night; she invites me to bounce back with her on those things. I accept, a little to please her, a little to try, because I've never done one in my life, and that it amuses me. I'm not very calm during the first few jumps: my body is not used to this thing, I have trouble maintaining my balance, once propelled in the air.
Then, little by little, I get there, I feel pleasure and even a slight euphoria to make great leaps towards the sky; I clearly understand the expression "to jump with joy", and I also understand, at this moment that if joy makes jump in the air, to jump in the air can give joy. It's like smiling, it works both ways.
I'm starting to build up my confidence, and I'm trying acrobatic tricks. My body is afraid again, and says "no, no, that's enough, just jump in the air normally". But my brain doesn't agree: what? You, the fear and phobias specialist, who has encouraged so many people to confront their fears, are you deflating? What would your patients say if they saw you obeying your fear?"
It's true after all! Why not take my fear? Little by little, I try to jump backwards. At first, it's pathetic, and then I can do it, its working; I throw myself back and bounce back when I can fall back on my feet. There, it's no longer joy or euphoria, it's just drunkenness.
The Greeks of antiquity warned against the hubris, this pride linked to success, which pushes to go too far. My increasingly successful galipettes rush me into the hubris. And in the jump of too much: shaded by my leaps, I throw myself into a last back salto.
A severe back pain tells me there's a problem. I remain breathless, motionless on my trampoline, looking at the sky and evaluating the pain; I think of a fracture. It's almost like that: vertebral compression of the first lumbar region.
They come to rescue me, they complain; then my wife yells at me: Do you remember that you are 60 years old? And when you're 60, you don't do penguins on a trampoline?" Well, no, I forgot my age and my inexperience.
But I don't regret anything. At least once in my life, I would have understood, in my body, why joy is associated with jumps; and I would have felt what little children feel then.
