Non-Risk Aversive Personality
Friday, February 18, 2005
The title of this post has been used to describe me more than once. I can see why. On Thursday I piloted an aircraft for the first time. It was one of these:
Cessna 152. Picture courtesy of AeroTraderOnline.Com.
That's only part of something larger. I love doing things if there is a certain amount of risk involved. And every time that I do, I am reminded, by my mother, of the time when she caught me walking out into the back yard with a sheet in my hands because I was going to parachute off of the roof. There is a saying that I try to live my life by:
"The goal of life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting "...holy shit...what a ride!"This is my motto and I try to live up to it as well as I can. Don't be afraid of what life has to offer. Take it and run. Try new things, expand your horizons, but most importantly live life. Don't just coast along, get in the driver's seat and head somewhere that you have never been.
And so, with that being said, I would like to leave you with the words of a famous poem:
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941
Posted byJ. R. Guinness at 10:54 AM
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