Dare to Dream: My Wish to Learn to Fly

As far back as I can remember, I've always envied birds. Watching them soar through the sky, gracefully carving their path through open air with no barriers keeping them from taking the path to whatever they want, it always made me wish I could do the very same. The desire to step out my front door, take off on a straight path to my work, no buses, no traffic, no crosswalks, is beyond description.

Nearly as impressive as avian creatures themselves, I often find myself remarking on the scientific marvel of humans developing aircraft. The fact that we found a way to make massive steel tubes big enough to hold dozens of humans and still somehow take to and navigate the air safely just blows my mind (not to say anything of doing it where the air is too thin to breathe). While I dream of a day when human flight doesn't have to be such a drain on natural resources, I still find myself in awe of the fact that someone stared at the sky long enough to tell gravity to gtfo because sticking to the ground wasn't going to cut it.

It's this combined inspiration by birds (and insects, I suppose) fused with my astonishment with aircraft that has fueled a dream I don't even remember forming any more it's been with me so long, the desire to learn to fly.

I know I'll never be able to fly among the clouds like Rogue from the X-Men or Goku from Dragonball Z. I suspect I'll never have the chance to strap on a jetpack like in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and let the world pass far below my dangling feet as I set myself on whatever course I damn well please. And that's okay (For the record, I've never gone skydiving, but I sure as hell would like to sooner than later). I respect the limitations of being a simple human with my non-hollow bones and my lack of wings. It is this acceptance, however, that drives my desire to do whatever I can do to get as close to that dream as possible.

If given the chance (and trust me, I'll be considering this carefully as I continue moving forward through life), I would jump at the opportunity to take flight lessons. I don't harbor any dreams to own my plane, I don't suspect I'd ever be able to afford it, but I'd gladly accept the offer to learn if even for a moment.

Any time I take off on a flight, the pressure that forces me back into my chair is exhilarating. Any time I look out a plane's window, the sight that greets me is too immense, be it an endless sea of clouds or an eternal ocean or an infinite landscape scaled down so small that all the noise and stress and problems plaguing the world just fade away if just for a moment. With every landing, I can't help but reflect on the seemingly impossible process that went into transporting me from one point on the globe to another in an infuriatingly short amount of time. That fact that I can climb into a jet at Seatac airport and step off it in Europe several hours later is unreal. It's not quite as good as teleportation, but it's about as close as one can get in this reality of ours, and the notion that a person can make that happen, that a human being steps into the cockpit of an aircraft and executes a series of tasks I can't even begin to guess at to stick it to the constant force wanting to drag us down to Earth is just too cool. It's a wonder to me that anyone wouldn't be clamoring for a shot to learn how to fly, to leave the world behind and enjoy the open air above its surface because they so willed it. I mean...wow...

So what's the point of this blog post? Nothing, really, except for me to take a moment to share a dream of mine, a dream I hope one day I can tell you all about achieving and whether or not it lived up to my expectations. A dream I look forward to realizing so it's no longer a dream but rather just a really good experience I got to have in my short time on this world.

What dreams are you chasing? What's a seemingly impossible hope you want to claim for yourself? Or what's something you always wished you could do that you managed to make real for yourself? I'd love to hear all about it.