Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.

The line treats vertigo not as a purely physical sensation but as a psychological drama: an unstable equilibrium between self-preservation and self-sabotage. “Fear of falling” names the instinct to survive and maintain control; “desire to fall” suggests a counter-impulse toward surrender, risk, or even annihilation—an attraction to the very thing that threatens us. Read more broadly, the aphorism captures how temptation often works: danger can be magnetic, and anxiety can coexist with fascination. It also hints at modern notions of ambivalence, where a single experience contains opposing drives, making the feeling of “dizziness” a metaphor for moral and emotional uncertainty.