Happy Friday, folks!
Here’s a bit about fear, and another on humility.
The Best Defense
John flew 268 missions over Vietnam as an attack fighter pilot. His F4 would launch off the carrier, a death marble out of an overbuilt slingshot, scream in across the beach at less than a thousand feet off the ground, Viet Cong fire on all sides, make it through the Ill Intent, deliver a retort of high explosives to a bridge, and return to ship.
“Buzz yelled ‘What’s that noise?!’ as he swung his plane around, back over the ocean. Took me a while to catch up with him. ‘That’s ground fire. It happens every time we cross the beach, man. It was pretty light today. You’ve just got to deal with it.’ He was just a young kid, and he got used to it.”
I asked John about Fear. “I think you should read the article.” He pointed to the military magazine on the table.
He had crunched the numbers. The odds weren’t in his favor. He wrote letters to his wife and kids “in case.” “I also had a life-changing talk with myself. I became convinced that while death was to be avoided, it was better to die than approach each flight with trepidation bordering on utter fear. As a result, while I never considered myself reckless while conducting ensuing combat operations, I was from that point on very aggressive.”
And there he sat on his couch, retired, living, the goodbye letters to his wife and kids unsent. Here I sit, thinking.
The Train
The rails started to tingle that high, quiet alarm. Hear that train a-comin’…it’s rollin’ ‘round the bend.
In this case, I was getting too big for my britches, and I knew Humility was ready with it’s lawnmower. If God wasn’t gonna cut me down, it was. There was a freight train heading my way, given the high range of the Pride quotient. Oh man…could it be avoided? Maybe if I reeled in the verbal street fighting? Stopped writing myself as the hero of every communication? Kept reminding myself of the truth - nobody cares, and that’s a good thing?
The train arrived just the other night. I looked through the telescope, and saw this:
The star cluster Messier 22 contains 83,000 stars, several black holes, a planetary nebula, orbits the galaxy every 200,000 years, and is “nearby” at 10,600 light years.
This closeup of the core (courtesy of Hubble) is 3.3 light years across.
The katydids sang in the night. Somewhere near the horse pond, an owl hooted. I sat there, looking into the telescope eyepiece.
“You’re kidding me.”
“Now arriving on track 4 - the Humble Train.”
I joyfully boarded, flattened in the best of ways.
Clear skies!
Josh