"And once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you long to return." --unknown

At different places in our lives we take a step that moves us outside the boundaries of our ordinary life--and we stretch. Like a snake, we grow, and with the growth we lose something as well--illusions, misconceptions, sometimes even small bits of freedom. I have had, as has everyone, moments of stretching as well.

The first was when I went to Africa at 18. I was young, sheltered, and naive. I went thinking I would look at the people I encountered with pity and perhaps give them some small measure of hope. Instead I discarded those misconceptions rather quickly as I found a world categorically different, yet full of people I respected and learned from. I learned that the world was much bigger than I could ever imagine; even more importantly, I learned that "different" is not a synonym for lesser.

When my son was born and sick for so long, I learned a lot about life and death and I stretched again. I perhaps paid a dearer price for that growth--I paid out in belief and securities but was repaid with an acceptance of death as a process of life. I learned that someone walking and breathing wasn't necessarily living and that death isn't necessarily a thief.

Much of my seperation from my husband was negative: negative acts and negative words that couldn't be taken back. Despite the high cost, this was also a time when I stepped off the wide, worn path my life had gone on and discovered a powerful word--choice. I learned that everything in life is a choice (not always in what happens, but always in how I react)--whether concious or otherwise, life is a choice; and whatever paths my life would go on from then on, would be by my own choice. Big stretch!

What does any of this have to do with flight--or skydiving? Looking at the sky while walking to class tonight, I thought of this quote and I had the same sense of having stretched once more. I needed this reminder. Life is bigger than my immediate surroundings I had learned from Africa--certainly the sky is bigger than the ground around me! Living fully is more important than fearing death, I had learned from Michael--embrace life...or the open sky, LOL! And I had learned that life is a choice...LIFE is a choice...so is going to the edge of a plane door and diving out of it (although with a very large Australian jump master strapped to your back, the choice is perhaps questionable at that last moment ;)) "I will never see the sky, the same way..."sings Vanessa Carlton, and I never will because it will be a unending reminder to live fully.



PS-And yes, Ralph, I know I am the worlds largest corndog, LOL!