Freedom. It's a word that is valued, misunderstood, fought for, cherished, taken for granted, and unnoticed by the human race, all at the same time. For one particular man, freedom is time away from his 5, or sometimes 6 day a week job; Within that 9, or sometimes 10 hour shift, he is not granted the freedom to breathe like he would want to, simply because it is just not possible.
On one particular night, this one particular man chose to cash in on a privilege only defined to him when he started working; He decided to sleep during the normal hours that a human being preferred to sleep. The wind outside blew relentlessly against the window near his bed, but he did not mind the mild fracas; instead, he took extra comfort in the fact that he did not need to be anywhere else but safe and warm under his blanket, hands under his head as they floated on a pillow.
The room was dark and peaceful in his opinion. He sighed, and soon after that his eyes did not resist the call of his mind to close...
...and open. The sun was out. The same winds that were banging against his window were now making the many pine trees that surrounded him sway gently back and forth, unlikely to stand still until the wind stops. The clouds above him were following suit; It seemed like they were in sync with the sound the wind made. He could also hear crows in the distance, doing what he could only assume would be their mating call. He laughed at the thought that it did not matter, especially on such a beautiful day.
With that, he began to walk, passing by the trees, his look dazed yet thrilled at the same time. The scent of pine simply did wonders to his mood, even if the occasional rogue speck of bark hit his eye, causing him to stop and rub them.
However, it did not take too much time for him to get over the initial pleasures that took over him as he got acquainted with this location. With every step that he took he began to notice that the wind was growing stronger, the melody it created began turning into a cacophony that resembled high pitched screams. If there weren't more specks that hit him, he would have to move aside to evade a pine cone.
Though things were not getting any better, he still kept walking, walking.. Step by step by step, until, out of nowhere, a thought hit his mind.
"Look down"
He never thought of looking down ever since he got to this place. He was too enchanted with what he saw immediately that the risks of losing his balance did not have much significance to him.
The he realized that he was not walking on ground. He was not walking on grass, nor was he standing in a puddle. His feet were on a tightrope, its beginning and end too far for his eyes to see. The pine trees that he walked with were apparently a lot taller than he expected; They extended down, down, until they disappeared in the darkness below him...
At the sight of this he lost his balance, regaining it as soon as he regained his balance. His arms were now spread out. They didn't have to be before. He was trembling. He was relaxed before. His breathing and heartbeat went faster, and a cold sweat started running down his cheek. What in heaven caused me to look down, he thought.
What he had to do was to keep moving forward. If he stopped, he would definitely fall. The walking continued, but this was no longer the pleasant constitutional he thought it was. He had to mind his balance, his composure, he had to be on his toes all the time to walk, to stay on the tightrope.
It wasn't long until he met other people walking on the tightrope.
Some were a lot more nervous than he was, some were in the brink of falling.
Yet he kept walking. As he walked the tightrope, the wind never let up, instead, it kept on going stronger and stronger. The images he saw were of no help to him. Now he say people falling, some jumping willingly, some giving up, and still others being pushed off.
The farther he went, the harder the journey became. He noticed some had all sorts of things with them to stay balanced, many paired up to keep walking, many leading a multitude saying all sorts of theories to stay on the tightrope.
Many people, many ways of survival; until he saw one man who stood out from all the other people he saw walking the same tightrope.
This man seemed to have the same smile, the same exhiliration that he had before he had even bothered to look down. He was walking, only doing the bare minimum to stay balanced.
He finally made his way up to him, and as he neared him, he shouted, "LOOK DOWN!"
The man walked slower, and shouted back at him, "WHAT'S WRONG!?"
He was closer to the man now, "Don't you see what's under you?"
"'course I do."
"Why so happy?"
"'cause I know there's a net down there that'll catch me if ah fall."
"Bullshit."
"Believe me, son. Haven't seen it mahself, but it's all ah got left to live for."
"Listen to yourself! How can you trust something you can't see with your life?!"
"Ah dunno. Listen son, ya can either believe me or don't; I can tell ya, I ain't no rocket scientist to say it it even scientifimatically exists. Fact is, it's something ya wanna think about now. Ah know you'll make the right decision." With this, the man walked away.
He didn't. The wind was so strong for him now, that his stress and vice weakened body flew with it, and he was beginning to fall into the darkness that changed his life when he first saw it... As he fell, the last words he had were, "It must be there"
"It must be there"
"It must be there"
"It must be there"
The words rang in his mind as he let out a gasp, opening his eyes into another darkness where the wind slammed against his glass window. When his breathing stabilized, his body slammed down in a similar fashion onto his pillow.
Out of nowhere, the voice he talked to before told him, "It's there."