Lessons in Flight #1

So growing up I was subjected (quite cheerfully though) to a lot of airplane analogies. My dad is a huge airplane geek (which has actually rubbed off a bit) and he knows EVERYTHING there is to know about them (or at least it seems that way most of the time--I wouldn't really know one way or the other). Those analogies still pop up from time to time when I'm making decisions or just thinking about the past.

Today was one of those days when for no apparent reason I suddenly thought of one of those lessons. My dad used to say that there were three things you should have when flying--airspeed, altitude, and ideas--and that you'd better have at least two. "If you don't have airspeed you better have altitude and ideas!"

I've been thinking about this quite a bit today and the more I think about it the more I realize that it's a perfect analogy for my life right now.

We all have bad days. Or weeks. Or months. Or even years. It happens. In all actuality, it's probably a good thing because it gives us the opportunity to feel empathy for each other. It's a universal fact of life. Those bad days can seem pretty overwhelming. I had a teacher once that said, "You can't drown if you don't put your head underwater", but sometimes it doesn't seem like you get much of a choice.

So what does airspeed, altitude, and ideas have to do with this? Well I think each of those components correspond to something in our lives. My dad used that analogy for bunches of different situations in a million different ways, but to me it pans out like this.

Airspeed is just like it sounds. Sometimes the only way to get over things is to keep on going. To get our speed up and just go with it because if we slow down we're going to stall out and then it's over.

Altitude means we have to get above all the junk in our lives that doesn't really matter. Sometimes we get caught beneath our problems when really all we need is a little perspective from higher ground.

Ideas are exactly that. We need a bit of creativty, some ingenuity to figure out how to get over, around, under, or through our problems. Sometimes it's not obvious, but almost every problem has a solution.

So, like I said before--you need two. Sometimes there's the days when you won't be able to just keep chugging along and other days you're not going to be able to get out pity party mode and some days you're just out of ideas. But if you can obtain just two out of the three then you'll be okay for one more day.

If this seems like a far cry from my last (rather scathing) post, then you're right, it is. But I suppose I'm just feeling optimistic. I made it through quite the week--I got a C on my first chem test, but pretty sure I just dominated my first calc test--and I realized that I definitely was only flying on two of the three. I was running really low on altitude...it made for a bumpy flight, but I made it through and I'll do the same thing tomorrow.

It'll all be okay. And tomorrow maybe the sun will shine and maybe it won't, but it'll be another day and another flight and just maybe the weather will be just right for flying. Good night tonight and good day tomorrow.