What does it take to trust that seeming emptiness will hold you up, to ride on thin air? You need strong wings. Which, it turns out, you can only get if you are willing to launch yourself into the emptiness.
When have you launched yourself into the unknown and found you could fly?
When I gave birth! What a journey!
As I reflect on this question I realize I have launched into the unknown many times in my life. The length of the flights have varied but none have ended in a total crash, though sometimes it felt that way for a short bit. Looking back each flight ending was just a launch into the next flight some from smooth air to smooth air and other from stormy skies into clear ones. I have not looked at it this particular way before. In recent years I launched from Cincinnati to Seattle for employment – that was smooth sailing until it wasn’t then launched back to Ohio for other employment and so far so good. I guess I have developed trust over the years – wind always returns to lift me up. And so I just keep flying – sometimes for long long trips and sometimes for shorter ones. It’s been a really good way to grow and learn and see many different views and landscapes.
Although I had multiple jobs during my working career, I believe that the last one was the largest flight into the unknown. Previously I had experience as a youth librarian in a public library but was offered a position as a children’s and young adults’ consultant with a state library. This required me to face the fact that I would be working with and offering professional assistance to many librarians in the state who had many more years of experience than I. I found, however, that all of us helped each other to the extent that my rewards from holding this position for 18 years shaped my life in a very positive way.