When I was young, and finished my schooling, I wanted to fly. I could go anywhere, be anything. No career appealed to me. No job was good enough. Because that was a limited thing: an accountant, a photographer, even a flying instructor. I didn’t want to be that thing.

I wanted ... more. And in the clouds, where all my dreams were, there was the possibility of more.

Whatever occupation you could name, I could find something above it, beyond it, better than it. I fell in love with the idea of endless possibility. The feeling of being a Seeker, looking for Truth, learning ways to see beyond the mundane.

I reached for the clouds, I learned to climb up and up until ... I was there! I was IN the cloud.

Up in the cloud it was silent. Up in the cloud it was cold. Nobody else was up there. I was completely alone. And the funny thing was, there was nothing to see. I might as well have been in a small locked room. The kind you get with padded white walls.

There was only the faint whispering of my own thoughts, which I could have explored from the ground.

Some clouds grow and grow to unimaginable heights. They are dreams gone wrong, they are wanting and lust and greed rolled into one, and the power is immense and vicious and deadly.

Luckily I left that cloud, and saw all the world laid out below me. It was true I could go anywhere, but where?

I needed a goal. Not a limit – a target, to develop my aim, to improve my life, to give me a purpose.

I looked to the horizon. What was beyond that? I wanted to know. So what was the next step? The answer was right in front of me.

The next climb. Something in reach, something ‘easy’.

Climbs are achievable, they are close by, in sunny places: opportunities that empower you, courses that enrich you, jobs that earn you money or give you skills to get up to the clouds again, and then you can continue.

They don’t need to be hard or unique or even fantastic to be worth your while. Because you can link that climb to the next, and the next. And people might join you, drawn by your purpose. And your journey can become quite incredible.

I’m currently working a climb I know well: flying instructor. It’s ironic that it’s the same as the first job I had, teaching paragliding. It’s as if I haven’t gone anywhere. Or, I have gone around the world, and come back to the beginning. And that’s OK, because I can show you the first step. I can teach you how to get up to the clouds.

Where you go from there … well, that is up to you!

© Greg Hamerton

Music from SOUNDSTRIPE
Certainly Uncertain (Be Still The Earth)
Losing Hope (Colossus)

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