F – Falling, What do you see?

F – Falling – What do you see? 

Do you ever dream of yourself and you’re falling. It might be out of bed. It might be from a mountainous adventure high up in the Himalayas. It might even be on an uncontrolled rocket ship or asteroid hurtling towards Earth. Falling comes in all shapes and sizes when it pops into my head in a dream. In some cases, it is a harmless fall, but in others, there are definitely dire consequences, usually my demise. 

It’s been said that when you are approaching imminent death that your life will pass before your eyes. If that is the case, how much time do you need to replay that life? And what are the events in your life that you see? Is there a cache of memories in a section of our brains that are organized and slated for “Please play this video in case of imminent destruction.”? As you grow older does this cache continually revise and edit itself to fit within the confines of a certain time limit? Or are there multiple caches that can be chosen from, with release instructions that correspond to the quick calculations your brain makes as to how much time it has to play said video?

These of course are things that take up space in my head when I sleep. What are the important things in your life that you want to see in the last few moments you have? Somehow I don’t think I’ll have a choice as to what my brain will pick, even though my dreams show me otherwise. 

What would be interesting is if you could choose where you get to see your final falling dreams. On Earth, gravity’s pull would have you fall at 32.1 feet per second per second. That means if you were to free fall out of a plane flying at 42,000 feet (ignoring possible slow down from air friction on your way down) it would take you 51.1 seconds reaching a Splat velocity of 1,644 ft./sec. before you hit the surface. How many parts of your life can you go through in less than a minute?

On Jupiter, gravity’s pull is 75.9 feet per second per second. That would give you only 33.27 seconds, reaching a Splat velocity of 2,525 ft./sec.

Need more time? First, you could try the moon. Its pull from gravity is only 12.1 feet per second per second. You would have over 2 minutes of time (125.9 seconds). And if you were on the planetoid Pluto, which only has a gravity pull of .08 feet per second per second, you would actually have 17.07 minutes of time with a Splat velocity of 81.98 ft./sec. or a little over 55 mph. An epic amount of time and at that speed, you might even survive assuming you figure out how to breathe there. I write complete stories about myself in my writing groups given almost that amount of time. 

So what do you think you will see when you fall from grace in life? What will you remember? Don’t let your disorganized imaginary dreams guide the way. Make your memories ones worth seeing again, with no regrets. In my opinion, take all the time you need.