Genesis

It was 2011. Summer was ending, the early Autumn lay low in the sky, casting shadows over the secrets i had kept and the stories i had told.

I was all alone with my thoughts, my fractured relationship, and my own guilt. My heart was broken in half, a chasm with no end. What do people do when they have becomc totally lost? Where do you go when you have betrayed even yourself? There was no escape from my sadness. I had uprooted one of the only things in my life that had always been constant, my relationship. I was at a crossroads. Having cloaked myself in secrets, i hid alone in the caverns of my own thoughts.

Confused about my relationship, my goals, my morals, my identity, my future career plans. I had to escape the earth, only for a moment. So there I found myself. In the left seat of a Cessna 152. I looked warily at the yoke, scanned the array of bewitching and indimidating dials with a set of cautious eyes. The instructor next to me, hazel eyes fraught with curiosity, regarded me with intruige.

“So, have you ever played flight sim? He asked, his voice full of ill-disguised amusement. “Uh, not really” I responded.
“D’you wanna fly for a living?” He probed on.
“Uh, yeah!” I said, hoping that would placate him.
“Oh, what do you want to fly?”
Oh shit.
“um, you know, like… for Air Canada or something!”
I guess that sounded like a good answer… until…
“Oh cool. What type of aircraft?”
Oh my god. What was I doing here. I don’t know anything about airplanes! I have an ART DEGREE! Granted, I had been on a grand total of 47 flights in my life so far, (yes, I used to count!), and my Dad had been an air traffic controller for 35 years. But I didn't know a Beaver from an F18! I squeak and grab the armrest when the airliner hits a little pocket of air on commercial flights to Hawaii. Plus, I really don’t like roller coasters. Aren’t pilots supposed to be daredevils? And now I’m going to FLY A PLANE!?! Was I finally going crazy!?!
As it turns out, I wasn’t. And I knew it the moment my two hands touched the yoke. Well….maybe not the moment, but several moments after that, once I had regained my composure and realized that it wasn’t going to fall out of the sky without my instructor holding onto it.

Flying set me free. The months of hating myself for my actions within my relationship, the years of lost trust when my world fell out from under me during family duress in my teens, the self-formed impression that I was limited to a set of expectations set by what I was “used to doing”, “good at”, “supposed to be doing”…it all fell away, during that first hour in my logbook. I found a way to freedom, an avenue to forgive myself and find balance again in my shambles of a life.

I can pretend that "i always had a thirst for adventure," that it was "in my blood", or that i was "looking for a responsible career path", but the true set of events that led me to the flying club that day were nowhere near as inspired. The true inspiration happened when i began to feel myself grow, expanding my courage, my intellect, my understanding, and my world as i made baby steps of progress in flight training. Real magic happens under the veil of night, when the sun sets and the stars come out. It begins slowly, as the bright orb creeps across the horizon, casting golden rays across our paths. Then, moment by moment, as darkness tiptoes in, the stars begin to flicker, a slow and gentle flush across the night sky. Each time i returned to the airplane, each mind-boggling ground school lecture, every little success, that is what inspired me to choose aviation as a career, a lifestyle, a way of thinking. Flying was coming home. I could close the little cabin door, take a deep breath, and lose myself in the total focus and regimen of flight training.

As they say, life is not about the destination, but the journey. When it came to flying, it was the journey that got me hooked, and it is the journey that brings me back to push onwards, and to make my passion into my life's work.
And so i return, waiting with a smile for the stars to come out again each night...