Wow. I wrote this about 5 or 6 months ago, somehow stumbled across it today and...well, I don't believe in coincidences, so I felt compelled to share this since it seems to relate so directly to my previous blog. A couple of my girlfriends and I had "freewrites" not too long ago that we did as a dorky thing, just the three of us. We'd pick song lyrics for each other and then spill our guts about what that lyric meant to us. Sometimes our freewrites were downright hilarious and sometimes they were pretty insightful and creative. I was assigned the following lyric from an MIA song...and here is what I came up with...
"I fly like paper, get high like planes"
from MIA "Paper Planes"
First, I want you to picture a paper airplane – the clean folded lines, how it glides through the air effortlessly and in the exact direction you aim it…the beginning launch always appears as a successful flight and then BOOM! Unexpectedly the damn thing takes a 90 degree nose dive straight to the floor. That seemingly perfect paper airplane has, in less than two seconds, become a bent and disheveled piece of origami with no hopes of ever flying as straight as it did on its first flight….
Ahhh yes…I can relate to that little paper airplane. My life has thus far, and I imagine will continue to be, a series of attempted solo paper airplane flights that always end the same way – crash and burn. I think I have folded my plane just perfectly, cleared an unobstructed flight path, and am ready for almost guaranteed success. For some reason, I am always surprised when my solo endeavors continue to end in what I used to view as failure. For the purposes of this little writing exercise, I’d like to refer to my mistakes as “crashes”. My perspective on these crashes is much more appreciative now than ever before and also now that I have been through so many, I am becoming somewhat of an aficionado at “disaster recovery” (HA!). These wrecks, although initially devastating and confusing, are always salvageable – IF you allow yourself to learn from them. It is a difficult thing to do to 1) admit how wrong you were and how badly you screwed up and then 2) to really be able to see the silver lining – to understand the lesson you were meant to learn even before you started folding up that little paper plane.
The silver lining – I could write all day about this little cliché but I will save that for another time – is what life is all about. The silver lining is what makes the last half of this song lyric make sense to me – lessons learned and all the good things that follow your “crashes” are what help you continue to grow as a person, truly appreciate life as the gift that it is and essentially take flight, not on your own, but with your friends, family, and God by your side helping you fly your plane through what no doubt will be a stormy sky at times. So recover from your crash and burns, fly straight through the storms, and always look forward to the next beautiful sunrise on the horizon.
Ahhh yes…I can relate to that little paper airplane. My life has thus far, and I imagine will continue to be, a series of attempted solo paper airplane flights that always end the same way – crash and burn. I think I have folded my plane just perfectly, cleared an unobstructed flight path, and am ready for almost guaranteed success. For some reason, I am always surprised when my solo endeavors continue to end in what I used to view as failure. For the purposes of this little writing exercise, I’d like to refer to my mistakes as “crashes”. My perspective on these crashes is much more appreciative now than ever before and also now that I have been through so many, I am becoming somewhat of an aficionado at “disaster recovery” (HA!). These wrecks, although initially devastating and confusing, are always salvageable – IF you allow yourself to learn from them. It is a difficult thing to do to 1) admit how wrong you were and how badly you screwed up and then 2) to really be able to see the silver lining – to understand the lesson you were meant to learn even before you started folding up that little paper plane.
The silver lining – I could write all day about this little cliché but I will save that for another time – is what life is all about. The silver lining is what makes the last half of this song lyric make sense to me – lessons learned and all the good things that follow your “crashes” are what help you continue to grow as a person, truly appreciate life as the gift that it is and essentially take flight, not on your own, but with your friends, family, and God by your side helping you fly your plane through what no doubt will be a stormy sky at times. So recover from your crash and burns, fly straight through the storms, and always look forward to the next beautiful sunrise on the horizon.
Much love,
Brooklyn
GO POKES!!! BEAT TEXAS TECH!!!
