Stories I know, and ones I don’t know, tend on a regular basis to flash in my mind as an image. I don’t know if this is normal or not, but it does surprise me when stories I don’t know happen to pop in and out of view. It never occurred to me until more recently that I could write them down. I don’t know that there is a great deal of value in writing them down (and often sharing them), but I certainly can’t see any harm. Whenever I begin to think about or write the story, I tend to find out what happens in them. It is incredibly satisfying. You may understand the feeling, if you have ever been annoyed that you could never seem to finish your dreams because you always wake up too soon. Then one day you find a way to finish those dreams even if you wake up.
A few Sunday mornings ago, I was singing a song with an eternal world view. For a moment, the thought of the fear of loosing children and life seemed less painful. I thought of my grandmother living till over 100 years old. Losing much of how she defined herself, even her memory. I wondered, how do you cling to life—your own life, but also loved ones’ lives—while not being afraid of letting go and not giving up after so much loss?
The image of a cowboy on the back of a bull or bucking bronco flashed in my mind.
Holding on.
One hand free.
Knowing he inevitably will be bucked off.
Yet, hanging on without crippling fear that would cause him to fail even faster.
I didn’t know the cowboy on the bucking bronco, but I realized it was a story. A very short story—or is it a long one? You can decide. I think the story it tells must be why there is such a draw to watching that sort of thing for “entertainment.” Some might feel it’s a gross form of entertainment because its touched with the threat of real violence. But I now suspect there is something more to it than that. Maybe it actually touches something much deeper. Most entertainment these days distracts from the reality of dying and living.
Life and raging bull rides inevitably end. For the cowboy, to ignore that reality is disastrous. However, fearing the inevitable is crippling, therefore equally dangerous. We could read entire biographies, watch whole miniseries on a person’s life, and still miss the big picture. For often the big picture is actually small, or in this case very short: a ride on a bucking bronco or raging bull is the story of holding onto this perilous life told in seconds.
Copyright 2019 J. A. Goggans
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