You may recall a deep-well of disappointment I fell into years ago. Gearing up for my 40th birthday, I had one goal. Yet the entire day was fraught with unmet expectations. The goal wasn’t met. It was a birthday remembered for what it wasn’t.
Yet two years later, I finally fulfilled that dream: I went up in a hot air balloon.
Reflecting on it all now, I can’t help notice the powerful lessons of perseverance, keeping an eye on what matters, letting things go… the tug and pull of those conflicting things…
and why being in a hot air balloon really was worth the trip.
Positivity, confidence, and persistence are key in life, so never give up on yourself.
We so often think of perseverance in the context of career or professional accomplishment. We speak of perseverance and the ability to get up again when we fail – but this nearly always seems to be around a situation when it is a failure of our own making. When we’ve made a mistake or fallen flat due to our own actions (or inactions) we are fed platitudes to get back up and keep going. When we drive hard towards something we want (a new business, losing ten pounds, selling our creative goods on Etsy, asking someone out and getting rejected) and fail, we can turn to many resources for ways to get ourselves back up again. Read the Internet and all the lessons and quotes about perseverance are not to let the times we fail keep us from pursuing our dreams.
But sometimes, we have to keep going even when we haven’t failed personally and especially when failure is hard to define.Â
It is harder to recognize when we’re knocked off-course from our dreams when it isn’t something we’ve done, and it takes more perseverance to keep going when the barriers in our way are not of our own creation.
When we don’t have anyone to blame (even ourselves) for dreams not coming true, it’s easier to give up. “It just wasn’t meant to be,” we sigh as though filled with wisdom.
It’s harder to craft a story when there isn’t a really good reason why we’ve been met with failure. But when we can play the blame game, and then overcome, the story gets to be something understandable honorable. When things fail simply because life is uncontrollable, we do not know how to write that story. Many times we let things drift until the resolution is actually an unending lack of resolution.
But we don’t need someone to blame when our dreams and goals haven’t come true. We don’t need a story for why we’ve failed or experienced failure. We need to just decide if we want to keep trying.
How do we show up when life gets hard – even if we don’t have anyone to blame?
How do we find a way to respond to the terribly dreaded, “It is what it is” phrase with a sense of ownership?
It doesn’t always have to be what it is.
Accept what has happened, But then persevere. Persist. Especially when it comes to your own dreams.
This may seem melodramatic for a 40-year-old mom’s hot air balloon ride. (The initial post I self-labelled as slightly melodramatic as well. Full circle, friends!)
But I can’t help but consider how long I had planned on a balloon ride when I turned 40 and how incredibly disappointed I was, and remain, in my entire 40th birthday experience. It would have been easy to shrug, say, “it is what it is” and just let it go. But redemption can be cathartic.
Mr. Family Trip kept me motivated; we knew I had this dream that neither of us was ready to let go. And he helped make it happen.
When we finally (many canceled flights and years later), found ourselves in a basket dangling thousands of feet above rolling autumn-baked hills from a balloon of patchwork colors, everything in my heart was peace and perfection.
There was a reason why I wanted this. And it did not disappoint. Being in a hot air balloon was truly an experience of a lifetime.
Say going up in a hot air balloon doesn’t have the same emotional weight for you, but you still want to make a flight happen – I am here with practical thoughts, too!
What to know about a hot air balloon ride:
1) Hot air balloon rides aren’t cheap.Â
This is a splurge situation that requires saving and, also, may not be available to everyone due to the price tag.
But I do think that if this is something you want to do, putting a little money away in a special fund each month will get you there sooner than you realize.
2) You will get cozy with the people in your basket, including your balloon pilot. Just be prepared for this, unless you plan to pay extra to rent the balloon for a private flight.
3) Balloon flights are warm (even when it’s cold out) and can be loud. We went on a day where the temperatures were very cold (40s) but found ourselves shedding layers as we stood under the huge flame used to fly the balloon. Layer up.
4) Flights that go first thing in the morning have a greater success rate of taking off than ones in the evening. We tried many times to book sunset flights because they sounded more romantic and, well, I just really, really do not enjoy or do well getting up early. But evening trips get cancelled at a much higher rate than flights that go in the morning due to shifting weather and wind patterns. So if your heart is set on going, book in the morning.
5) Not all areas have balloons. They fly with the wind, so need a good, broad area of land in either direction. (No one wants to land in the ocean.)
6) Plan for champagne afterwards! Champagne after a hot air balloon ride is a tradition that goes back centuries.
7) Take some photos but then also sit back and enjoy the utter stillness as much as you can. It was unlike anything I have ever experienced. We were moving fast but without wind sounds and resistance we were, literally, floating.
I don’t know what dream of yours may have been thrown to the wayside by the direction life went. It can be small, it can be big. But just notice if there is something you really want, something that feels true to your life, that you’ve stopped trying for because you’ve shrugged and said “it is what it is.”
Maybe you haven’t failed at it because you haven’t tried it. Maybe life never gave you the chance to try it so it’s been easier to let go of the fear of actually doing it. But wouldn’t it be better to fail at something you’ve actually tried than to simply let life remove the chance?
No more “it is what it is.” Go do it.
May the winds welcome you with softness. May the sun bless you with its warm hands. May you fly so high and so well that God joins you in laughter And sets you gently back into the loving arms of Mother Earth.