Always be willing to die

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Note: This is a “short post” (what’s that?)

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Everything is shaking.

Your muscles tense and your stomach drops.

Every bump brings you slight panic. Enough to interrupt your previous thought with the terrifying assurance that you are minutes from crashing to your death.

Occasionally, you shake it off, citing positive data on commercial flight safety or fluffy analogies about a car on a bumpy road. But most times logic cannot prevail. The suffocating power of panic and fear and too much caffeine bury you.

Flying is a barometer for how you feel about your own life

You need to be comfortable burning to the ground. I know that sounds extreme. But you cannot have regrets or last minute wishes when you feel death is imminent because at that point, it’s too late.

A text or prayer desperately and half-heartedly lobbed from 22D cannot offset a life poorly lived.

That sickening feeling you get. The churn of turbulence and diet coke in the pit of your stomach. That is liquid gold. You need that stuff.

Breathe it deep. Embrace it. And use it.

Take it with you back down to earth as fuel.

Fuel to stop being stubborn, and apologize.

Fuel to stop being calloused, and forgive.

Fuel to stop being lazy and apathetic, and actually have that tough conversation, make that big career move, and start living so your actions match your values.

Do this over and over every single day so that each time you are 30k above ground, you feel more and more comfortable with the idea of a tailspin into some bare farmland in southeast Kansas.

You only get here by living well. So, do it.

Be kind to others. Be excellent at your craft. Be honest as all hell. Be entirely you. And always be willing to die.



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