Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Take two (or three) ... what dreams may become

Work and life have been keeping me very busy with not much time to mentally wander around flying headspace. I'm rescheduled for tomorrow, 9/18. The weather forecast shows clear skys and low chance of precipitation so I am about to enter the chute, finally.

I find myself getting a slight bit anxious today but also somewhat excited about the prospect of winning this small personal victory. Learning how to fly has been so much of a dream that it's actually quite difficult for me to consider it as a reality. I'm curious to see what happens when dreams become so. My first (real first) attempt years ago turned into a nightmare. But I am not the same person I was then, thankfully.

When I think about it, I wonder how many people actually get to make their dreams into reality. Often, it involves a considerable amount of effort (which I know I am just about to begin), luck, and often an insane level of persistence. The I Ching has a great line that repeats in many hexagrams:

"Perseverence furthers..."

I'll have to ponder more on the subject, because I think part of our global malaise is that nobody buys into the dream of a better world anymore. Even Obama's rhetoric seems cooled as of late as we gear up for the slugfest of the final days.

This is, again, one of the reasons I feel so strongly about things like the space program. It gives people hope. When an astronaut (or cosmonaut) goes up into orbit, we all go up in a sense. They represent us, all of us, perhaps even life in general to the extent that it has evolved from simple single celled structures. I often like to think of our leaving the planet as somewhat akin to our ancient ancestors taking those first few steps out of the ocean.

In any case, DT 2.0 alloy stress test #1 coming up. The clock is ticking, about 31 hours to wheels up. Let's see if all my mumbo jumbo is worth the disk space.

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