Before We Learned to Fall

August 17, 2026

I grew up watching Looney Tunes, and even now, if I happen upon one of those cartoons while flipping through the channels, I will often stop and watch.

They still make me laugh.

There is one old gag involving Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd that has stayed with me. Elmer is chasing Bugs when he runs right off a cliff. But instead of falling, he simply keeps going. He does not know about gravity yet, so apparently gravity does not know what to do with him either.

Then Elmer learns about gravity.

Once he understands that someone who steps off a cliff is supposed to fall, he does.

It is ridiculous.

It is also strangely profound.

It made me wonder how many things we once believed were possible simply because no one had told us yet that they weren’t.

A child does not enter the world carrying a book filled with all the things she cannot do. She discovers. She experiments. She imagines. She climbs onto folding tables carrying little green plastic hammers.

Sometimes she falls.

But falling is different from being taught that she should never climb.

Somewhere along the way, we begin collecting rules about ourselves.

Be realistic.

Don’t expect too much.

You’re too old for that.

That’s not practical.

People like you don’t do things like that.

You can’t.

Perhaps some of those rules are necessary. Gravity, after all, is real. There are consequences to stepping off the edge of something and expecting the universe to make an exception.

But not every limitation we inherit is a law of nature.

Some are assumptions.

Some are fears.

Some are conclusions other people reached about themselves and handed to us as though they were universal truths.

And sometimes we accept them without realizing what we have accepted.

We learn about gravity.

We look down.

And suddenly, we fall.

Maybe growing does not always mean learning more rules. Maybe part of growing is learning to distinguish between the laws that keep our feet safely on the ground and the beliefs that unnecessarily keep our possibilities there.

There was something Elmer Fudd understood before he learned about gravity.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say there was something he had not yet learned to believe.

That he couldn’t keep going.

Perhaps there are places within each of us that still remember what that felt like.

Places that existed before all the labels, assumptions, expectations, and limitations accumulated.

Places where imagination was not foolish.

Where possibility did not require permission.

Where we had not yet learned to look down.

Maybe we cannot escape gravity.

But perhaps we can question some of the other things we were taught to fall for.