Take A Risk
By Jeremy Gulley
For the last ten years, a friend of mine has been working with his dad on a twin engine plane. They have rebuilt, painted, fixed, and tweaked it, going through ups and downs, good days and bad days, but did it all together.
This week, they took it up in the air and flew it for an hour and a half. He has been in planes before, but said it was different because he had never been in one whose screws he had tightened, whose landing gear he had assembled, or whose engines he had bolted down. But they made it. When I asked my friend how it felt, he said, “it feels good to be alive.”
I thought about his statement, and realized that it is times like those, when we are faced with a real chance of dying, that the joys of life are the greatest. When we push ourselves to our boundaries we become cognizant of the beautiful world we inhabit, and the little things seem to just fade away.
When I told another friend about the flight, he said, “why the heck would he do that, he could die.” I said that the chance of death is exactly why he flew the plane. He had to see where his limits were, he had some questions that needed answered, and he had to see what he was made of.
“Besides,” I said, “you could die just as easily driving your car on the highway. If you want to be completely safe, you are never going to be happy.”
But how often do we play things safe in our lives and think we’re doing the right thing? Too often, I think. As a teacher at a small community college, and pastor at a church that meets in a homeless shelter, I am told constantly why something can’t be done, why something won’t work, or why something should be done a different (safer) way. But that’s rubbish. We can’t win what we don’t put in the middle, and we can’t prove that we are alive if we don’t test the theory once in a while.
My suggestion: start something new and scary – study a language, run a race, forgive someone, talk to someone new, take art classes, volunteer, skydive, mountain bike, ride horses, travel, or all of the above. We only have one chance to get it right.
Short URL: http://osawatominews.com/?p=1700
Posted by admin
on Jul 5 2012. Filed under Jeremy Gulley, Opinion.
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