Life Lesson: Keep Your Options Open

As often as we like to make up our minds about things, one of the things that I have learned through the course of my life is to keep your options open. Yes, we like to make specific decisions (or at least I do) about what kind of car we want to drive, what type of clothes we wear, what are we going to eat for supper tonight, the list goes on and on and on. Sure, these are small things, and we can make decisions on small things. The point that I am trying to make is that we need to embrace the ambiguity of life.

Throughout the course of my experiences in life, I have come to learn that humans are life long learners. That is to say we have the capacity to learn something new everyday. One way I would like to illustrate this is in a personal experience of mine.

For about two years now, I have been developing a keen interest in aviation. I can't exactly explain it either, but I am simply amazed at the corporate world of flight. Airports run so efficiently, it takes me back to my days of theatre, where during production, the theatre is pretty much a well oiled machine. It just goes. Plane come in, they land, passengers board, plane takes off again. But it's not just that. The aircraft themselves. The sleek look a plane's angles. The scream of a jet engine. The sheer engineering marvel that we can take a piece of metal and make it fly. Astounding.

In my years of grad school, whenever I found myself to be stressed out, or if I just needed a change of scenery, I would go out to the Norfolk airport for hours, and watch the planes fly in and fly out. When it came time for breaks, I would book flights home instead of driving 6 hours. I would even look for layovers, just so I could get on another plane and experience the exhilarating feeling of takeoff and flight. But it didn't stop there. I cannot tell you how many hours I have spent sitting in front of a computer watching YouTube videos of nothing but planes at airports. I think I'm pretty much hooked.

But before all of that happened, the very reason I became interested in aviation was because I flew to Pennsylvania to visit a friend to fulfill my other passion- theatre.

I didn't know that I would become fascinated by planes. Frankly, I was terrified at first, and a bit foolish. I can still remember asking a ticket agent what it was she just handed me- my boarding passes.

So I think the point of this entry is that you never know where life is going to take you. I went to UNCA because I wanted to do drama. Then I wanted to become an RA. I didn't know that that would lead me to a Master's degree. I didn't know that visiting a friend would inspire an appreciation and interest in aviation.

This Sunday, I continue to pursue that interest. I will be making my first flight as a student pilot, in my very first flying lesson. Hopefully by December, I'll be able to fly with my Private Pilot's License. It is a dream coming to fruition.

So, keep your options open. You never know where life is going to take you.