Ok so the blog header here says that this is a blog about life, travel, and the world as we know it. Now – up until this point every post has been pretty thematically related to travel and the Philippines and my recent trip there. Not today. Today you get LIFE AS WE KNOW IT (a hearty combination of two topic points in my header).
So let’s just get straight to it. Chuck Aaron is a hero of mine, and not for the reason you might think. It has nothing to do with helicopters (ok so there is that too). This man took a dream, made it into a passion, and chased it so hard that it became bigger and better than he could have ever imagined.
I’ve always dreamt of flying helicopters. Literally. Always.
Some of my earliest memories are from when I was 3 years old and we were strapping into Bell 212’s in Papua New Guinea, soaring through rain forest valley’s of south east Asia, and landing at the remote mountain mining camp I grew up in. It sounds like a spin-off of the LOST tv series I know, but that is my real life.
For 5 years the only way into or out of Tembagapura was by company helicopter. We would fly into the coastal town of Timika and then be hurried across the tarmac to waiting Bell Helicopters. Big, noisy, oily, white and yellow helicopters that smelled like jet fuel and jet exhaust. I LOVED IT. I was also hooked from that point on.
My point is that I had a dream. I wanted it so badly that I chased it down, and when I finally realized that dream and became a commercial helicopter pilot it was the greatest feeling in the world. And then something happened, I wanted more. I had everything I wanted, and it wasn’t enough. It was time to take that dream and make into something bigger than I could have ever imagined. It was time to grow it, and twist it, and change it into something that even I don’t recognize today. It seems like something new is always getting added, and as if I have 50 bazzillion pokers in the fire, and when I pull one out and cast it aside it doesn’t bother me for an instant – because I’m ALREADY living my dream.
So now where do I go with this…OH…that’s right, Chuck Aaron. This man is an inspiration and hero in my eyes. Like I said before, it isn’t even entirely because of the Red Bull Helicopter thing and Aerobatics. That’s all awesome, but the really big thing, the inspirational thing, the motivational thing, is the fact that he too had a simple dream that he chased with fever, and when he finally got his hands around it the LAST thing he did was get content and stop. He kept going, and tweaking, and building, and today he is the only pilot certified by the FAA to conduct aerobatic maneuvers in helicopters in the USA. ONE PILOT. That’s huge! Something tells me his original dream wasn’t to be the one guy the FAA says is cool enough to fly the Red Bull helicopter upside down. Hell – Red Bull didn’t even exist back then. It was simple – a foundation. Check out this video.
So now I have some questions for you. What is your dream, what is it that you are chasing? Or are you even chasing it at all? Are you living your dream? If you are living your dream, did you stop chasing it?
It isn’t simply a matter of getting there. We always hear people say that journey is what matters the most, not the destination. That’s because the journey is life. The destination is death. We don’t really want to ever get there. If you aren’t chasing your dream right now, then you are living the destination – you just don’t know it yet.
WanderTogether 