The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F_ck

At three feet, your body goes into full-scale red alert. You
are now within an errant shoelace-trip of your life ending. It
feels as though a hefty gust of wind could send you sailing
off into that blue-bisected eternity. Your legs shake. As do
your hands. As does your voice, in case you need to remind
yourself you’re not about to plummet to your death.
The three-foot distance is most people’s absolute limit.
It’s just close enough to lean forward and catch a glimpse of
the bottom, but still far enough to feel as though you’re not
at any real risk of killing yourself. Standing that close to the
edge of a cliff, even one as beautiful and mesmerizing as
the Cape of Good Hope, induces a heady sense of vertigo,
and threatens to regurgitate any recent meal.
Is this it? Is this all there is? Do I already know everything
I will ever know?
I take another microstep, then another. Two feet now. My
forward leg vibrates as I put the weight of my body on it. I
shuffle on. Against the magnet. Against my mind. Against all
my better instincts for survival.
One foot now. I’m now looking straight down the cliff
face. I feel a sudden urge to cry. My body instinctively
crouches, protecting itself against something imagined and
inexplicable. The wind comes in hailstorms. The thoughts
come in right hooks.
At one foot you feel like you’re floating. Anything but
looking straight down feels as though you’re part of the sky
itself. You actually kind of expect to fall at this point.
I crouch there for a moment, catching my breath,
collecting my thoughts. I force myself to stare down at the
water hitting the rocks below me. Then I look again to my
right, at the little ants milling about the signage below me,
snapping photos, chasing tour buses, on the off chance that
somebody somehow sees me. This desire for attention is
wholly irrational. But so is all of this. It’s impossible to make
me out up here, of course. And even if it weren’t, there’s
nothing that those distant people could say or do.