A few weeks ago, a friend offered to fly me from Charleston, South Carolina to Gatlinburg, Tennessee in his four-seat aircraft. Given that I had never flown in anything smaller than a commercial plane, I jumped at the opportunity. I asked him where and when and at 5 AM I paced back-and-forth with excitement a few feet behind my front door. When he arrived, I must've looked like Amelia Earhart ready to fly over the Atlantic, my hand propped proudly on my hip.
Trembling with coffee and excitement, I began to ask him about flying like I was a 6-year-old child, the words "how" and "why" pouring from my mouth with increasing speed and when we finally arrived to prepare the plane, I could barely hold back my excitement. But, when we began the take-off process, something changed: an overwhelming sense of fear came over me as his voice came over the planes radio system.
See, I have always hated heights. When I would go to amusement parks, I would be the kid who held everyone's bags (and if I was lucky, the pretty girl's purse) while they rode the rides. But, I decided to face my fear, and after minutes of being in the air, all seemed well. Over the next few hours we talked about life and music, and I asked a lot more about flying. We even ate some in-flight-peanuts that he'd jokingly told me to bring. I took him all too seriously.
Now, If you've ever flown into Gatlinburg from the South-East, you'll know that you have to cross a ridge-line standing nearly 8,000 feet above the airport's tarmac. Typically, this is completed with no problem, but on this particular day, a stack of clouds draped over the mountains and seemed to ascend to the feet of God--granted, we were almost there ourselves, in more ways than one. With our planes inability to go over the clouds and the dangers of bobbing and weaving between the bottom of the clouds and the mountain-tops, I figured we would turn back. But my pilot pressed on, confident and calm, directly towards a wall of white. It was then that he decided to tell me how wild flying around clouds could be and how he lacked the license to fly through them. I asked him if it could be a what-they-don't-know-won't-hurt-them sort of deal. He told me how pilots die all the time flying into clouds. Yup, scratch that option.
As we barreled towards what I thought would be our bitter, cloudy end, I began to notice something remarkable. Between the clouds, every-so-often would rest a small round hole of blue sky. Those were the gaps. Those were our ticket home. After maneuvering through 6 or 7 gaps, we came to one cloud that blocked all view, not a hole in sight. "We are going to go above this one," he said, "but we'll be maxing out at 12,000 feet, so things could get mushy--airplane talk for "HOLD ON TO YOUR SEATS, FOLKS"--and once were above it, well, lets hope for the gap." "Let's hope for the gap," I repeated with more fake courage than I've ever mustered.
Often in life, even after giving your absolute all and considering every outcome, the best you can hope for is a gap in a cloud of obstacles. All you can do is your best and then believe it'll make its way back to you. And even when you fail--given the stakes are less life-and-death than plummeting to a fiery doom--at the end of the day, when you hang it up, the pillow is always a little softer knowing that you tried. And that you were the one, who when given a choice to go above or below or to turn back, chose to go through and shoot for the gap.
Do and believe.
"The best way out is always through" - Robert Frost
-JRH
