The other day I got a request from a client to replace a rooftop door on a five-story apartment building. It was torn off hinges that were probably installed sometime during the Coolidge administration. The closing mechanism had been violently pulled away. Looked like it had been kicked outward. The scene seemed strange, initially. There was no way off the roof - none that I’d recommend, anyway - and the door could have easily been opened from the inside. The destruction was pretty senseless but not at all unusual. In the immortal words of Lt. Frank Moran, “I figured, what the hell, that’s (Oakland)”.
The landlord, however, stated that it looked to have been propped open using a couple of bricks. She thought the wind from one of our recent rain storms had yanked it off the hinges. I told her it would have taken a climatic event heretofore not experienced in Oakland. She reminded me that we’ve been experiencing such events all winter. It was hard to argue with that. But still, I’m guessing only a tornado could do something like this:
That, or someone went upstairs for a smoke, forgot their weed, and accidentally let the door close before realizing it. Like I said, that’s Oakland.
I realized pretty quickly that the door wasn’t a standard height, the frame would need some work, and Home Depot was not going to help me resolve this issue. The landlord and I agreed that she should contact a door specialist for the job. However, that didn’t solve the short term problem of the 6’ by 3’ hole living where a door should be. The only people with access were the apartment residents, and it would take Spiderman to get up there any other way. So it wasn’t a question of anyone trespassing. But the Bay Area rains are far from over, and there were who-knows-what kind of storms in the forecast. So, I thought about what any skilled craftsman would do in that situation. However, not being a “skilled” craftsman, I decided to seal it up with a few old sheets of plywood. The job itself was simple enough. But what made it notable was the fact it took place some 50 feet above the ground.
In his 1997 book, The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker describes “fear” in an unusual way. He defines it as an evolutionary strength as opposed to the weakness many of us believe it to be. Fear is essential in propagating the human species. Without it, we’d never have progressed beyond our first slimy footsteps out of the primordial sludge. Fear gives us power; adrenaline surge, heightened senses, a charge to our survival instincts. It is a short term stressor - unlike most of the stressors in our lives - that is fundamental in ensuring our survival.
You have the gift of a brilliant internal guardian that stands ready to warn you of hazards and guide you through risky situations.
Intuition is always right in at least two important ways;
It is always in response to something.
it always has your best interest at heart
I have what most would call a robust fear of heights. It’s known scientifically as acrophobia. I’ve never been diagnosed. I don’t have to be. It’s readily apparent every time I stand on anything higher than about 15 feet above the ground. You see, that’s where my comfort zone begins to disintegrate. Somewhere between 15 and 25 feet; the difference between a broken leg and a broken neck. Any higher and my brain assesses the situation, calculates the worst possible outcome, and sends a wave of absolute terror though my body that threatens to shut down the entire system. It’s really quite breathtaking. But not for the reasons most people would assume. It’s not so much the height itself or even the fear of falling that’s the problem. Instead, it’s the almost uncontrollable urge to jump.
How do we experience fear?
The roof was ample, at least a couple of thousand square feet in area. I was in absolutely no danger of accidentally falling if I’d just stuck to my work area. As a handyman, I was content to get the job down and go home as soon as possible. As a writer, however, I was interested in something more. And this instance provided an excellent opportunity. I wanted to better understand how fear slowly, gradually takes hold. How terror builds within our consciousness that then connects to our bodies. How does it feel physically when dread ramps up in our minds? I understand that sudden burst of adrenaline when we’re confronted with immediate danger. The fight or flight response everyone gets with life or death situations. But I’d never really taken the time to experience that sensation incrementally. I had never paid attention to my own fear as a slow reveal. So, standing about 20 feet from the edge of the roof, I started walking forward.
A growing fear is so often described as “rising”. I’ve always assumed that meant internally, building up within ourselves. But as I noted above, I’ve never attempted to analyze it in real time. At 15 feet from the edge I could feel a warm buzzing in my ankles as they dragged my feet along. It was palpable, but I still felt relaxed and in control. At about 10 feet, the sensation began spiraling up my legs, causing them to quiver. Not unmanageable, but strong and consistent. And I could sense the energy threatening to push up into my torso. At around 4 feet, maybe slightly less, the power that had started with only a hum crashed over me like ocean waves across beach pebbles. I could see the ground now. It was no longer a fictional concept but a concrete - forgive the pun - fact. At that point, the “welling up” of emotion seemed to spill out into the air around me. It wasn’t just internal anymore. It was a force becoming manifest outside of my form. And it was making demands. Despite the fact that the inner workings of my chest cavity were clamoring for escape, I took one more miniscule step. That’s when I felt myself leaping from the edge.
I reached out for the purchase to my right, a handhold on the tiny slanting roof of the aforementioned doorway. A cool breeze of relief hit me briefly as I focused on the canopy of a building across the alleyway. It was approximately 20-25 feet down. The magic range. The difference between a temporary maiming and a permanent death. If I had jumped I could have reached that spot and almost certainly lived; battered but alive. Then my eyes fell again to ground level, and the urge that now felt more like an external power pushed me forward once more. I tightened my grip on the handhold and violently pulled myself backward. I stepped away and turned back toward my work. My autonomic system quickly returned to normal as I took a long breath. Yes, the whole exercise was probably a bad idea. But I gained some surprising insights about my own fears.
According to a study from Florida State University, the urge to leap from high places is called High-Place Phenomenon, or HPP. Somewhat of a boring name but, hey, scientists…what are you gonna do?
French scientists have another name for it: “The Call of the Void”. I love it. And not just because it’s an absolutely brutal honorific for ending it all in an instant. I like it because of the way it echoes life. Sometimes, when we do get too close to the edge, to that one aspect of ourselves that has become undeniable, there’s a gravity that doesn’t necessarily pull us down. Instead, it pulls us forward. An irresistible force created by the choices we make within the lives we lead. A singularity of our very own design drawing us, eventually, to who we really are. That’s the form writing has taken in my life. This is why I’m on this particular adventure. I got too close. And it finally pulled me in.
That’s all good and well, but is there really a comparison? Can a phobia really be anything more than a crippling condition? Is there anything to be learned from it.
According to Johns Hopkins:
A phobia is an uncontrollable, irrational, and lasting fear of a certain object, situation, or activity. This fear can be so overwhelming that a person may go to great lengths to avoid the source of this fear. One response can be a panic attack. This is a sudden, intense fear that lasts for several minutes.
Irrational? Uncontrollable? Those words certainly sound familiar to me. A nagging in my mind that’s never gone away. A pull toward an idea that I put off until life found it necessary to hurl it back in my face. I don’t think it would intellectually bold to suggest that our weaknesses are necessary for helping us recognize our strengths. But perhaps such fear can be understood more deeply than that. What if the force that draws us into the void is the same that pulls us toward the light, or the writing, or whatever the hell anyone wants to call it? This is what de Becker was trying to say about intuition. It recognizes that force and always works in our best interests. I’ve been wanting to be a writer for at least 20 years. I never really considered myself one until I got so close to the edge that I couldn’t pull myself back. Into the Void I fell. And now I’m lost in my own story. How’s that for brutal?