HOW TO KEEP A JOURNAL

"I’m feeling a little up in the air today. It’s like I don’t know what I’m feeling—it’s not bad or good or up or down, it just is what it is, ‘not being connected’ or something. But I’m making the decision right here, right now, not to judge my up in the air feeling. When you think about it, being up in the air—soaring like a bird—could definitely prove to be interesting. It could change my perspective on things. Actually, this thought brings back a memory from a couple of years ago…

"My wife and I were in Cancun. It was late in the afternoon and we were on the beach where we’d been watching tourists, one right after the other, be lifted up into the sky while strapped under a kite. ‘Parasailing’ is the fancy name.

"The operation we had been witnessing was anything but fancy. It consisted of three Mexicans with a speedboat, a piece of yellow nylon rope and the kite. It seemed that at this late hour, when the sun had moved behind the hotels at our backs, business for the guys had come to a halt. They were driving the boat back and forth in front of the beach trying to attract one more customer before calling it a day. The customer, after some taunting by my wife and some friends, turned out to be me.

"I sauntered over to the take-off and landing strip on the sand, tentatively, as I wasn’t completely convinced I was going to enjoy the trip. As I approached, the 'ground man' was counting the daily take and packing up the gear. But the moment he set eyes on me—the last catch of the day—he hurriedly unpacked the harness.

I think getting home to dinner, and not my safety, was the ground man’s main objective at the time because when he tied the cheap plastic yellow rope that attached me and the kite to the speedboat, he tied the knot in about two seconds. I’m not even sure it WAS a knot! He made a couple of fast loops is what I witnessed him doing. Then, within another two seconds he gave me all the instructions he deemed necessary for my personal safety. Then the speedboat took off and I was skyrocketing almost straight up into the stratosphere!

"To say I was scared would be…well, you know. And usually I like to think of myself as somewhat of a daredevil! I’ve climbed down into a live volcanoes—things like that. But looking down at the roofs of the hotels that were becoming smaller every second, and then back at the knot which was just far enough out of reach that I couldn’t possibly fix it, and thinking of the cheap yellow plastic cord that was holding the force of the weight of the kite against the wind—I could’ve hard a heart attack. Given what I now know about the state of my heart, I’m not sure I know why I didn’t!

Okay…so this is what came out when I thought of writing my journal today. No planning, no thought about what I was going to write, just a feeling of being "up in the air."

I thought the power of example might work better than any sort of instructions I might give.