I just love technology. I am typing this blog to you from 37,000 feet up in the air as we chase the sun to the west coast from the east coast. I love looking out at the tops of cumulus clouds (just stay the heck down there below us and please disperse before we arrive in Dallas!) and the way the sunlight glints off the various rivers, streams and lakes. It’s amazing how vast the North American continent, and particularly the U.S., really is and how there really are large patches of land, hills, valleys and mountains that don’t look to have much development happening on them or around them My geography is kind of screwed up right now but we’re flying over a state with lots of hills in it for miles and miles and they are all very emerald green.

I’m glad that I can enjoy this flight because one of the things that I’ve suffered from are huge panic attacks about (to the point of fearing like I was going to look like a Garfield doll with all four sucker paws attached to the window of the plane…) has been about flying. I’m sure it has something to do with having issues with control and having to accept how out of my hands this aircraft staying up in the air really is for me.

But when I can sit back and look out the window and enjoy the flying…there is just almost nothing better. My friend Bill C. likes to fly gliders and catch thermal waves (I think that’s right) when he’s not running businesses and creating technology that I can’t even understand enough to write about here. Evidently, Bill and his glider friends head out to places like west Texas and have races/contests to see how long they can stay up or maybe how high that they can fly (if Bill reads this, hopefully he can say a little bit more about what he does). The point is, I love hearing about what he does because the fearless part of me is right there in the cockpit beside him (or wherever a passenger would sit in the glider plane!). I must have an over abundant dose of whatever the chemical is that makes us feel fear strongly. And, if fear comes from our thought patterns I know that the one thing I have control over is how I allow myself to think my thoughts.

There have been many instances in my life when I have been so scared that I just want to give up and pull the covers over my head, but what an opportunity that I’d be missing if I did avoid the opportunity to grow and learn to listen to the still quiet voice within and connect with the understanding I have called a Higher Power, I can first of all, listen to the small quiet voice to see if there is any validity to my fears. Is there something that I am not paying attention to that could otherwise harm me or others? If not, the next step is for me to ask that voice to help me hear what it is trying to say to me. Sometimes it is just vestiges of the past left in my cerebral database still trying to get my attention from many years of in-attention. Then the next step is to look towards what I am afraid of and ask for help from my higher power/higher intellect/the force–whatever you call yours insert here–to help me overcome my fears so that I can do that thing that I have so much fear of doing.

Facing fear in a balanced manner is such a different approach for me. In the past, I would either have jumped straight into a fiery ring of fire or run like a bat out of hell from whatever it was that was causing me the fear. I’m coming to realize that fear, for me, is just my reptilian brain doing it’s job keeping me alive. The good news is that I have a highly developed brain that I can use to discern what is real and what is not, what to keep and what to let go of, where to correct my course and where to stay on course.

Right now, I’m just grateful that I’m sitting here in this plane feeling like I’m flying so high that I can just about touch God. Small steps. Small Steps.

Sending packets of courage your way to help you face up to fear when it comes-a-knockin’