Rod Serling, author and host of The Twilight Zone original TV series said, “The most unfettered imagination belongs to young people. They don’t walk through life, they fly… they defy the law of gravity, mentally anyway.”
As an entrepreneur, there is always something longing to play the role of gravity and drag you down. Lack of time, lack of energy. Money issues. Staying organized. Planning, then adapting as plans get changed. Record keeping and tracking. Customer relations. Distractions. The fight to remain motivated and inspired. The struggle to even get out of bed day after day to tackle it all again, many times without immediate evidence of any progress.
Flight
Do you know why the young fly so easily? Rod Serling says it is because they have an “unfettered imagination”. Webster’s online dictionary defines unfettered as, “not controlled or restricted : free, unrestrained”.
The truth is they don’t know any better. They haven’t yet imagined how costly mistakes in real life can be. They haven’t been beaten up in the pursuit of dreams. It has never occurred to them that when you fly, you run the risk of crashing. Crashing and burning. Crashing and burning and exploding and being strewn across the landscape so far that the authorities can’t put the pieces back together, let alone identify the body. They fly because they haven’t yet learned to fear.
Grounded
So, if you have a few more years, and know from experience the possible consequences of stretching your wings, are you forever condemned to be earthbound? Not hardly. With age comes (or should come) experience. Experience teaches us to prepare for possible outcomes with training and planning. Experience can lead us to make smarter decisions. Having known energizing creativity and motivating success, our wings long for the wind and urge us aloft. Having felt the pain of failure and the pang of regret, our wisdom can channel our ambitions and guide our flight. Today we can be in a better place to fly than ever before, if we conquer our fear.
Remember this: conquering our fear does not require that we banish it, only that we not allow it to ground us.
Fear
That voice which reminds us of the times we have crashed, is fear. That reaction which jerks your hand back after reaching out, is fear. The imaginings of all the ways you can fail are fear. The endless excuses? Fear.
Resolve to walk, to run, to fly, no matter what the mutterings in your mind may say, and in spite of fear. Listen to the other voices; the ones which make you long to go further and reach higher. Use the hard won advantage gained through experience to ascend higher than you have before, sustained by careful planning and wise choices. Deliberately climb further, better. You already have what you need to do it.
Go ahead. Defy gravity.
To acknowledge that Halloween is upon us, I have hidden a link to the Wicked Witch for inspiration about defying gravity. Can you find it?
If you liked this post, please comment below. I appreciate the interaction, and I will always answer.
Thanks for reading! -Jon
9 Responses
I am sorry, but I am, as my branding would clearly suggest, Superman. I am well-acquainted with flying by now. Next?
I JEST! Thanks for this. As the Great Prophet Yoda said, “Fear leads to anger…anger leads to hate…hate leads to suffering!” with that signature Frank Oz vocal fry upcurl at the end. Fear holds us back, definitely. (Except me; I’m Superman. You have to pay attention please.) Fear restricts and inhibits forward momentum, surely. And I apologize for calling you Shirley, surely.
Where was I.
AH! Flying. But I’m Superman, so I already knew all of this. Next?
I appreciate your comment, although I must admit it has left me scratching my bald pate in confusion. Surely the cognitive dissonance is mine, as someone so super as yourself certainly would not speak or write in such a way as to not make sense. I apologize for not providing any new knowledge to your day, but I can rest in the hope that you did follow the Wicked Witch link and were enriched by a stellar Broadway performance.
I’m a little confused…did you just say something about *thinks to self* *confused face* *grunts and strains* *can’t remember*
…something?
This is a great reminder for us to try to live life with less fear! We definitely get bogged down in our own self-sabotaging thoughts. Upward and onward, we should go!
I agree. As with a lot of my blog posts, I am talking to myself as much as anyone else. I am learning—even at my advanced age—that fear, especially fear disguised as caution or prudence, can be crippling. Being a creative person requires mental and emotional freedom.
Thanks for the boost, Jon! I think this is why so often we shouldn’t pay attention to the negativity or nay saying of those around us. Fly…in spite of it all.
“for nobody, in all of Oz, no wizard that there is or was, is ever going to bring me down”
Thanks for the comment, Billie Jo! A great quote from Elphaba as she learns to fly, literally and figuratively, shedding the baggage from her past that held her down.
Once more, your blog post is flying high, Jon. And oh – I really enjoyed watching the performance of “Defying Gravity.” Though I have to confess that I like the books so much better.
Thanks, Laura! I read the first Wicked book and really enjoyed it. This video, and the other 20 versions of the video that I watched on YouTube with other actors, made me want to see the stage paly also. The ending of Defying Gravity is supposedly well known as one of the hardest to sing in theatre.