Lesson learned from flying with friends
I had a profound airplane dream. I was flying with a couple of friends to an event in the dream. One friend said she could fly us there and jumped in the pilot's seat without hesitation. I remembered asking her if she was qualified to fly a plane, and she responded that it was no big deal. I was a little nervous as I settled into my seat and was pleasantly surprised when she handled the plane like a pro.
On the way back, a different friend flew the plane. As we took off, she pulled back, and the plane rocketed into the sky at a scary steep angle. I felt a wave of panic rush over my body as I gripped the armrests, and in a blink of the eye, the scene changed. Same plane. Same group of people. But instead of being way up in the sky, we were flying just above the ground.
I sat in my seat, watching out the window as the plane's wings brushed through the tops of the trees. You could tell the steep ascent had shaken her, and now she was flying so low and slow that it was almost like we were riding in a car. Worried that we would clip a wing and crash, I yelled to her, "Do you know we are only about 12 feet off the ground? You could fly a little higher than this."
She ignored me and continued flying down the road along with the car traffic. A few minutes later, a dog crossed into the road, and she stopped the plane. We hovered in mid-air as the dog looked up at the plane and then continued crossing the street. By this point, my blood was boiling. It was going to take us forever to get back home at this ridiculous speed, and I remember thinking, "what's the point of flying in a plane if you're just gonna drive it like a car?!"
When I woke up, the echo of that question kept repeating itself over and over in my head. So I sat down with my journal and let myself explore what it meant in my waking life.
Planes are built to fly high and fast. They were not created to fly low to the ground the way that cars do. That's actually way more dangerous for them. But if you don't know how to fly a plane, you might try and fly it in the environment you do know (the road you typically drive on).
This dream led me to ask myself, "where do I think I'm playing it safe, but it's actually riskier? And where in my life am I doing what I know rather than what I was built for?"
Maybe not everything is meant to be a series of baby steps. Maybe you just have to decide that it's time to fly, and then you realize that is exactly where you belong.
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