Summer of Authenticity: Fully Alive! [Kelly Gill]

I absolutely adore working with positive people, and the piece below is written by one of my favorite positive persons (who’s also a client). Every session has her showing off her willingness to get her hands dirty, so to speak, to get to the growing. But growth isn’t always about hunkering down and dirty; sometimes it’s about flying high …

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Today as I was driving down the freeway, I passed our local airport and watched a single-engine plane as it completed its taxi down the runway and then lift off into the air. As I watched the plane I thought of my friend Tom, who, at the age of 41, died earlier this year from cancer. I thought of Tom’s bright blue eyes, his hearty laugh, and his love of flying — he’d earned his pilot’s license just a year before he died.

After saying a little something to Tom, I started thinking about a plane flying. It’s a huge, heavy hunk of metal that, for physics reasons beyond my comprehension, can stay airborne, like it’s floating in the sky. And that made me think about people—all people: you, me…everyone. We’re not as heavy as a plane, so why can’t we fly? I don’t mean our bodies flying. I mean our spirits flying. What happens to our spirit that makes it heavier than a plane, so much so, that our spirit can’t soar like that plane does? I mean, if a huge, heavy hunk of metal can do it we should be able to do it, too.

That’s when I realized that we do fly. Sometimes we fly high above those puffy white clouds, and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we’re like crop-dusters, barely off the ground. Sometimes we experience turbulence and dip a little, or a lot. Sometimes we crash, and those times suck, but they help us learn. And sometimes we gently land, simply because life gets a little too overwhelming and we just need a break or a little maintenance. Regardless of the quality of our flight though, we still fly. It’s just not always the high flying that we think is the only *real* flying.

Thanks, Tom, for drawing my attention to the plane, otherwise I wouldn’t have given it a second thought.

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Hello All!  Here’s a little bit about me… I’m a non-traditional student at Southeast Missouri State University, earning a B.A. in Communication Studies with an emphasis in Family Studies and Social Work. I am also a guest lecturer on issues pertaining to LGBT equality.  Last, but definitely not least, I am one of Dian’s clients and a student of Me. 

If you’d like, you can contact me on Facebook or Twitter.

Part of the Summer of Authenticity: Fully Alive! series, now available as a free eBook!