The Edge

From one of my favorite books

The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others–the living–are those who have pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and and Later.

But the edge is still Out There. Or maybe it’s In. The association of motorcycles and LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means of to an end, to the place of definitions.

Here’s what I have learned about edges: They are neither as dramatic or cool as Thompson makes them out to be. I think he’s totally right, they can be really scary. The only people that can tell you about them have crossed a chasm that makes it impossible to ever relate to The Way Things Were.

But if you go around associating them with motorcycles and cliffs and Capital Letters, you’re going to miss all the little ones that are right there in front of you. And you’ll forget all the others you already had the balls to cross and didn’t even know about.

Written by Ryan Holiday
Ryan Holiday is the bestselling author of Trust Me, I’m Lying, The Obstacle Is The Way, Ego Is The Enemy, and other books about marketing, culture, and the human condition. His work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared everywhere from the Columbia Journalism Review to Fast Company. His company, Brass Check, has advised companies such as Google, TASER, and Complex, as well as Grammy Award winning musicians and some of the biggest authors in the world. He lives in Austin, Texas.