You're standing on the edge of Niagara Falls, waist deep in regret but head floating above your shallow pride. You peer down and it literally takes your breath away, and not in a breathtaking-view kind of way but in the way that you know that might be the last breath you ever take. You grope yourself just to be sure the harness is in place but the people in charge of safety have long abandoned the site. All that remains is a cacophony of taunting and jeers, urging you to take the leap as soon as you can, but you just can't put a finger on who's saying what. You take your perfunctory sheepish smile back at the audience (who seems to only take form in your mindless head) and you stop right there in your tracks. Well, stop! Cause not everyone needs to be a fool just to get the world to take a look you.

The temptation to fall into the beauty that has always been tempting you with lust and just the thought of falling into the depths of heaven rather than rising above it seems to surrealistic to be a call to danger. And you're bound to be right, at least for the first few 100 metres or so. The adrenaline kicks in and you're free-falling, having dispelled all fear and just basking in the glory when the jeers have now reformed into cheers. At that instance, you are infinite and you are the king of the world, that is the world of delusion you have castled yourself within.

And then it hits you. Not the ground yet, but reality. You forgot to check your harness, or did you? That's ok, you know you always remember to bring a... PARACHUTE! It's not there. Double-check. You confirm your imminent demise. The fall seems to be getting faster against the law of physics because you're already travelling at terminal velocity. Terminal. Haha, what a morbid sense of humor physicists have. Too late for that, you'll be as dead as Schrodinger's cat. Or was the cat even dead? FOCUS! You try to grab on to the nearby rocks but your feeble attempts only leave marks on your wounded soul. You scream for help (like that would ever work) but nobody empathizes with you. After all, you made the choice to leap off the cliff in the hope of satiating the temptation to do so. There was a snapshot of your final moments anchored on land, and that would soon hit the headlines the day after tomorrow. The day after tomorrow. The end of the world. The end of my world. This is the end.

And then you jolt awake--just a bad dream, phew. Then the noises rejoin the atmosphere and resound once more through the thin air, gripping you with fear and tickling your spine with sensations you wish you never knew. So alas, you had fainted in anticipation (out of sheer excitement you reiterate to your restless audience) and here we go again. You triple-check this time, for your harness, your parachute and just before you leap off, you gather the safety-men back again. And you make a final simple request:

To take off the gear and let you go free.

Everyone stares mouth agape, reeling in shock, but they comply and soon astonishment transforms into glorification. But you take a step back and you sit down, and you take a deep breath in; this time, you feel the warm, soothing air rushing down your esophagus, and the oxygen revitalizing your cold, stiff limbs. You remember why they said the Niagara Falls was a breathtaking sight, a scenery for one to behold only once in a lifetime but a memory to hold on to forever. And you could never be more content.

For sometimes, standing on the brink of temptation and on the edge of desire, it is perhaps wiser to just bask in the feeling of being taunted, jeered at and called to temptation rather than succumbing.

Not till you've got your parachutes, your harness (make that 2) and your safety-men. And even then, who's to stop you from jumping?

Who's to control you except yourself?