Philip Simmons, diagnosed with ALS at 35, reflects on life, death, and acceptance in his book 'Learning to Fall', blending personal narrative with philosophical insights. He discusses the importance of recognizing life as a mystery rather than a problem, emphasizing that all individuals experience their own falls. The work serves as a reminder to appreciate the small joys in life amidst facing adversity.

2.  June 9, 1912, in Wando on Daniel Island, South Carolina .
 Philip Simmons was Associate Professor of English at Lake
Forest College in Illinois, where he taught literature and
creative writing for nine years before being disabled by
Lou Gehrig's disease. He was a frequent speaker and
workshop leader for churches and civic groups, and was
contributing editor of the UU World, the journal of the
Unitarian Universalist Association.
THE AUTHOR

3. B.A. in English and Physics from Amherst
College, his MFA in Creative Writing from
Washington University in St. Louis, and his Ph.D.
in English from the University of Michigan.
His short fiction has appeared in Playboy,
Ploughshares, The Massachusetts Review,
TriQuarterly, and the Alaska Quarterly
Review. His criticism has been published in
numerous scholarly journals, and his book, Deep
Surfaces, on postmodern American fiction, was
published by the University of Georgia Press in
1997.

4. Paperback:
176 pages
Publisher:
Bantam;
Reprint edition
(April 29, 2003)
Language: English

5. Philip Simmons, Ph.D., was just 35 years old in 1993
when he learned that he had ALS, or Lou Gehrig's
disease, a fatal neuromuscular condition that usually
kills its victims in two to five years. With two young
children and at the start of a promising academic and
literary career, he suddenly had to say goodbye. And
by learning the art of dying he succeeded, against the
odds, in learning the art of living. Already a widely
published author of fiction and literary criticism, he
now shares his hard-won insights with this book.

6. “Learning To Fall”
By: Philip Simmons

7. New Hampshire’s White
Mountains
S
e
t
t
I
n
g Hospital
 House
 Mountain
Chocorua

8. Characters
Philip Simmons
Kathryn (wife)
Aaron (seven year –old son)
Amelia (six year-old daughter)
Two Brothers
Two young friends

9. Learning to fall
(Summary)
 He spent the happier parts of his life at the southern edge of New
Hampshire’s White Mountains, two peaks rule his imagination:
(The legend of the defiant Pequawket Indian chief and his wife climbing
Mount Chocorua.
 He was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease.
 His wife Kathryn and seven-year-old son Aaron were climbing Mount
Washington.
 Actors and stunt men learn to fall: as kids we watched them leap from
moving trains and stage coaches.
 Christian theology of the fall, we all suffer the fall from grace, the fall from
our primordial connectedness with God.

10.  We all suffered, and will suffer, our own falls. (styles)
 Zen parable
 3 years later he course of an illness that kills most
people in or five years, He belonged,statistically,in
wheelchair, not on the side of a mountain.
 He watched rain storm.
 He reward his self reading, "The women’s magazines
in the check-out line”. “ Three weeks to Thinner
Thighs,” “Ten Successful Men Tell What they Really
want in Bed.” Working Mother magazine. “working
Mother.” illustrate –the whinny child , the fussy eater-
then let down to business of dishing out nuggets of
advice set off in the text with bullet points.

11. He had a toothache.
Gabriel Marcel, is fundamental: problems are
to be solved, true mysteries are not.
He said that “ We can participate in mystery
only by letting go of solutions. This letting go
is the first lesson of failing ,and the hardest.
He driveway to compost pile .
He practiced Buddhist meditation .
His wife and son left for their hike.
In the hospital top of the Mount Tripyramid.

12. Analysis
Actors and stunt men learn to fall: as kids we
watched them leap from moving trains and
stage coaches.
Athletes learn to fall, and most people who
have played sports have at some point had a
coach tell them how to dive and roll. Devotees
of the martial arts learn to fall, as do dancers
and rock climbers.

13. Christian theology of the fall, we all suffer the
fall from grace, the fall from our primordial
connectedness with God.
 falling forward and down into the scarred
years of conscious life, falling into the
knowledge of pain, grief, and loss.
learning to fall is more than merely a matter
of posing, more than an opportunity to play it
for laughs.
NEXT

14. Zen Parable
The man who was crossing a field when he saw a
tiger charging at him. The man ran, but the tiger
gained on him, chasing him toward the edge of a
cliff. When he reached the edge, the man had no
choice but to leap. He had one chance to save
himself: a scrubby branch growing out of the
side of the cliff about half way down. He grabbed
the branch and hung on. Looking down, what did
he see on the ground below? Another tiger.
Then the man saw that a few feet off to his left a
small plant grew out of the cliff, and from it there
hung one ripe strawberry. Letting go with one
hand he found that he could stretch his arm out
just far enough to pluck the berry with his
fingertips and bring it to his lips.
Back

15.  Rain storm invented describe : “AWESOME
and Majestic.”
“I felt something more than beauty. Seeing such a storm come at me now
across that vast space I felt the astonishment of the sublime, which
Edmund Burke defined in the eighteenth century as "not pleasure, but a
sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquillity tinged with terror." It was as
though I had been privileged with a glimpse of my own death, and found
it the most terrible and beautiful thing I had ever seen.”

16.  levels life is not a problem, but a mystery
“from the philosopher Gabriel Marcel, is fundamental: problems are to be
solved, true mysteries are not.
Personally, I wish I could have learned this lesson more easily—
without, perhaps, having to give up my tennis game. But each of us finds
his or her own way to mystery. At one time or another, each of us
confronts an experience so powerful, bewildering, joyous, or terrifying
that all our efforts to see it as a "problem" are futile. Each of us is brought
to the cliff’s edge. At such moments we can either back away in bitterness
or confusion, or leap forward into mystery.

17. We are all—all of us—falling. We are all, now, this moment, in the midst
of that descent, fallen from heights that may now seem only a dimly
remembered dream, falling toward a depth we can only imagine, glimpsed
beneath the water’s surface shimmer. And so let us pray that if we are
falling from grace, dear God let us also fall with grace, to grace. If we are
falling toward pain and weakness, let us also fall toward sweetness and
strength. If we are falling toward death, let us also fall toward life.

18. Theme
Mystery
Simmons distinguishes between “problem” and “mystery.”
Acceptance
Simmons writes, “All of us at certain times in our lives, in the
face of failure, loss, illness, and finally, our certain ends, find
ourselves asking: why get up this morning? And, given what
I’m facing, what work is there for me to do in this world that
can possibly make a difference? Lately I’ve come to feel quite
strongly that answering these questions begins with
acceptance. Not resignation, not passivity, but a profound
and thorough acceptance of our place in the natural order.”

19. Resurrections
Do you agree that “in order to be reborn, we
first must die”? Die in what sense?

20. Genre
Non-fiction ,Essay or Diary

21. Moral Lesson
Don’t wait for a tragedy to start appreciating the
little things in life. We shouldn’t have to be
chased by tigers or leap off a cliff to savor the
sweetness of a single strawberry.