Choose Living!
The choices we make…So often in life we are given choices, some of which are easy and others which are hard. From choosing to get up and go work to just choosing to get up and go to the bathroom. Both might seem like the same :-), but life is what you make of it. Most people want to believe that their life is preordained or that they are a victim of circumstances or perhaps what they want is out of reach and should not be attempted.
Consider that none of that matters, not one single tiny bit! You have two choices everyday…as a quote of a movie I like, The Shawshank Redemption, You can either, "Get busy living or get busy dying. Damn Right!”. Or put another way, you are going to make some choices about your life when you wake up, even if that choice is to do nothing but pee in your bed (I know, it's gross, but hey it still is a choice). So, if you have a plethora of choices to make, get out of bed or not, brush your teeth or not, oatmeal or Cheerios, work or play, blue shirt or red shirt, on and on and on…and somewhere there is still the choice of living your dream…now or later or the choice of never. All of these are choices and none of them have any more sway over the other except that you get to choose, at any moment, to act one way or another. Why not choose to live your dream? Now! You want to be a pilot? Choose it now and go do it!
Oh, but there are circumstances…I don't have any Cheerios, I need to pay the bills, I got to go to work, my red shirt has a stain on it…blah, blah blah. I didn’t say call work, quit your job and go running down the street to the local flight school without a shirt and declare, “I’m going to be a pilot!!”. It might work but chances are you’re flying on something else already! :-) Choosing your dream doesn’t mean it happens overnight or that it will necessarily be easy. To be sure, some folks get their dreams easier than others. That is just what happened to them. Others take years. It has taken me 12 years to get closer to my ultimate dream (some of you may know but I can only whisper it at this point) and it has been a lot of work and some struggles and frustrations and still, I might not get the dream but in the meantime, I am doing parts of the dream. Busy living. I’m a Private Pilot with over 500 hours and have flown ultralights, trikes, taildraggers and own two aircraft and a small business because of it! Wow, that wasn’t even in all the dream sequences and yet there is so much more!
I am inspired by people who are living their dreams…a young man is a CFI for his father’s sea plane business in Alaska. Or a guy who has flown all over the place and currently loves, just loves flying his plane near thunderstorms to seed clouds! Many, many young people who have started working in the regional airlines like Boutique Airlines or SkyWest. And so much more!
There are days I wonder what the heck am I doing? And there are days where I choose not to live my dream and choose to just be…happily so. But most of the time I choose to live my dream. It takes courage to turn out to be who you are. Get up and choose to live your dream! Or don’t! It’s your choice.
