Leap of faith !!

A post on ‘leap’  - leap defying gravity !!  - first how We, humans react !! 

A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public gesticulating the fire; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. Perhaps that is  just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.

 

From the time, I started watching Cricket, have seen some great catches – by Eknath Solkar, S Venkaraghavan – and many many great fielders of modern era – Jhonty Rhodes would readily come to mind with come of his outstanding catches.  Ever heard of - Sybrand Engelbrecht !! 

 

Back to  U19 WC finals of 2008 – with  rain reducing the Under-19 World Cup final to a battle of nerves, the Indian bowlers held theirs better than did the South African batsmen to win by a dozen runs.  Set 99 to chase off 98 balls after the rain break, South Africa never got going and collapsed 13 runs short. The  first one to be dismissed due to the fielder’s mastery was none other than Virat Kohli.  Engelbrecht, who was fielding at backward point, timed his dived to perfection to grab the ball out of thin air. A few overs later, Engelbrecht again took a brilliant catch to send Tanmay Srivastava back to the pavilion. Srivastava, who tried to slice the ball towards backward point, witnessed an airborne Engelbrecht grabbing another sensational catch.   Engelbrecht  later moved to  Netherlands and made a comeback to international cricket, representing the Dutch national team in the 2023 ODI World Cup and the 2024 T20 World Cup.

 

Such jumps when players are totally air-borne are attention grabbing, they defy gravity, they are sensational, out-of-World !!  A cricketer does not actually defy gravity when jumping. The ability to jump in the air is a result of applied physics principles, athletic training, and biomechanics, where the cricketer generates enough force to overcome the immediate pull of gravity for a brief period.   Physics is all about the ability to accelerate the body vertically, displacing the centre of mass. To do that, one really has to beat gravity, kind of.

Gravity has a speed of 9.8 meters per second per second (9.8m.s2). It is a squared relationship which means it is a rate of change with each second, this is an acceleration). To become airborne you can leave the ground at even low speeds which is why everyone can jump at least a little bit. You don’t have to beat gravity completely. But the greater your speed at take-off the longer it takes gravity to turn you back around and the higher you will jump. If you leave the ground at 9.8m/s/s, you're going to be moving vertically for one second before you reach 0m/s speed (due to gravity bringing you back down). So, the faster you leave the ground, the longer you'll beat gravity for and because it’s a squared relationship every millimetre of take-off speed counts. If you double your take-off speed, you'll jump up four times longer, doubling the height of your jump.

 

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard  [1813 –  1855] was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on organized religion,   morality, ethics, psychology, love, and the philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony, and parables. Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives as a "single individual",  highlighting the importance of authenticity, personal choice and commitment, and the duty to love. Kierkegaard prioritized concrete human reality over abstract thinking. 

Søren was acclaimed to  philosophize in paradoxes, as they are often the only apt method of speaking upon this life’s travails.  In his two notable works -  Specifically, Either/Or and Fear and Trembling,   he philosophizes primarily upon faith as a source of hope in a dark world, and a solution — albeit complex, challenging, and potentially impossible to grasp in the end — to the existential terrors of this transient existence.

 

Søren Kierkegaard  is known as the “Father of Existentialism.” As a philosopher, he was a profound, if at-times inscrutable, speaker on such topics as freedom, anxiety, despair. And faith. Here are couple of his  ingenious quotations :

“I opened my eyes and saw the real world — and I began to laugh”

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” 

A "leap of faith" is an act of believing in something intangible or without proof, requiring trust and confidence in the absence of logical or rational evidence. The term is often associated with the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and can refer to a religious belief or a secular act, such as making a major career change or pursuing an opportunity despite risks.  

A common way to interpret Kierkegaard’s thought is in terms of three “existence-spheres”: the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious. The idea that there are precisely three such spheres is an over-simplification, as this reckons without important subdivisions in this schema. Kierkegaard also describes these spheres as “stages” (Stadier)—as in the title Stages on Life’s Way.  

 

Here is a leap of faith, defying its body dynamics and gravity
 
Regards – S Sampathkumar.
16.11.2025