Live every second like it was my last one don’t look back got a new direction

Jacob Zwalrski was the greatest tight rope walker I have ever seen. In fact, Jacob was the greatest tight rope walker that has ever walked amongst the sky. He was the Leonardo da Vinci of tight rope walkers. While many were more talented walkers or entertainers, Jacob was a jack of all trades rope walking genius.

His repertoire included blindfolded feats, juggling, unicycles, hand over hand crossing, and marathon sessions of hours up on the rope without falling. Jacob wowed the crowd by his consistency, his creativity, and his willingness to stretch his profession beyond the dreams of his fellow entertainers.

Just like the rest of his fellow rope walkers, Jacob started young. He started on a balance beam. He then moved to a rope three feet off the ground. Eventually, like us all, he practiced up high, with a large balance stick, with his net. Finally, he graduated to what we all see in the circus ... a performer, his trick, his rope, and his net.

We used to joke with Jacob about how clean his net always seemed to be. In twenty-five years Jacob never fell. Not off the balance beam, not from three feet, not from three-hundred feet. Not that he was cautious. Quite the opposite, his risk taking was legendary. He was notorious for the "gaspers", when the audience is certain you will fall and becomes audible. However, he never lost his step.

So when he came to me, the man who taught him ... if anyone can have claimed to have taught Jacob Zwalrski to do what God intended him to do on Earth ... and asked if he could add a new trick I answered of course before even hearing what it was he wanted to attempt. We all know now that he planned on performing without a net. I told him he knew the risk but as long as he promised a simple walk, I would agree. He concurred.

So there we stood. Under the big top, as rapt as the audience as Jacob attempted the most boring walk he had made in fifteen years. Fifty feet in the air, a simple walk across the sky upon his trusty rope. This time, with no net. He stepped on the rope with confidence. By the fifth step the crowd had refused to breath. By the sixth step he was experiencing for the first time what the rest of us were used to ... he was falling.

So we stand here now. We pay our respects to the greatest man I have known. He was fearless. However, will we remember him for his years of perfection or the one fall that claimed his life? Remember, we have all fallen when we knew there was a net there for us. How many of us dared to walk without a net? Who had the courage to fall then? Was Jacob stupid? No. Jacob was human and he picked a bad time for it to show.