Change Proof: Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long-term Resilience

CHAPTER 6

The Myth of Balance

Limits exist only in the souls of those who do not dream.

—PHILIPPE PETIT

Just after 7 a.m. on a cloudy, humid morning on August 7, 1974, a lithe young Frenchman, holding a long balance pole, performed the most bizarre act in New York’s long history. He stepped onto a steel cable strung between the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center, and using a pole for balance, walked to the middle of the wire. He was 1,350 feet in the air. For nearly an hour, while a huge crowd gathered below, he went back and forth eight times and even laid down in a demonstration of the triumph of human balance. Or insanity.

I remember being at home in Queens when I heard on the radio about the crazy man who walked a wire between ...