Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Flying



I love to watch birds fly as they soar into the heights or gently land on a limb. I love to watch them ride air currents and fly in formation.  It's beautiful sight.

I would like to say that I would love to fly also. But despite the beauty and romance of it,  I'm afraid of the whole process. Somehow, the gravity thing just keeps popping into my head. I use airplanes for transportation whenever needed and even though I understand the physics of the process, it just doesn't seem right that the big, heavy plane can stay up. It's the gravity thing again. (I know, I'm picking and choosing which physics principles I want to accept.)

Theo however has liked flying since he was little. I remember when he was four, one day he came into the house limping. When I asked what was wrong, he replied, "If only I had had a few more bags, I think I would have made it." He had tied several plastic grocery bags together to use as a parachute and jumped off the top of his tree house. As you can guess, the experiment didn't work as well as he had hoped. I think maybe Theo took after his grandfather who played tree tag in his youth. He and his brothers would go into the woods and play tag by leaping from tree to tree. If you touched the ground, you were out. Maybe the whole leaping from high places skips a generation. I certainly have had no desire to leap from any high place.

I think the most telling thing about my aversion to flying is that I have never had a dream about it. Flying dreams are one of the most common, and they are one of the dreams that people like the best. Apparently, dreamers enjoy looking at things from above and like the free sensation that flying gives them. Sounds good in theory, but the whole gravity thing even invades my sleep.

So I guess flying is just one of those areas where I will stay grounded in both my imagination and dreams. And that's okay with me. It's the whole gravity thing again. :)

Do you ever dream about flying?