Flying Loose

Thanks to Richard Rohr’s daily meditations (meditations@cac.org) for inspiring my thoughts today of “flying loose”. I recommend his daily meditations. When I was in college, I joined an airplane club and earned my student pilot’s license. I learned to fly in a Cessna two-seater. It was a simple airplane. I recall an early lesson about not keeping a tight grip of the yoke when the airplane was in a windy situation. I had to learn to trust that the airplane would pretty much fly itself, that is until it was time to land. I had to learn to not try to over-control, in other words, “fly loose”. Flying loose was an important lesson about airplanes as well as a valuable life lesson. The reality is that neither you nor I are in control of nearly as much as we think we are or want to be. This does not mean that in some situations we do need to have control; especially over ourselves, which is called self-discipline. However, we also need to learn the lesson of flying loose. When I learned the lesson of flying loose, I realized that I was able to look around from that small airplane and enjoy both the marvelous view and ride. Flying became a much more wonderful and relaxing experience. Life can become a much more wonderful and relaxing experience if we learn to fly loose.