Field Notes 002

The 40,000 View

We like to talk about getting the 40,000 foot view. 

We like the idea of zooming out so that we can see how or why things are functioning the way they are, perhaps even with the intention of fixing or solving them, including your own blindspots and short-comings.

But there’s a cost that comes along with this endeavor.  One that presents you with a few problems. 

When you’re that high, you see EVERYTHING. 

Are you ready to see everything? 

Are you ready to KNOW what you’ve seen? 

Are you ready to deal with the magnitude of the consequences of what you know about what you’ve seen? 

Do you have the capacity to take any action whatsoever that would tilt your life, or the lives of others, in a direction that would be of the utmost benefit to all parties involved based on the knowledge of what you've seen? 

Or are you just going on a sight seeing mission to see all the pretty things and come back to Earth unchanged and still wilfully blind? 

There’s an animating spirit within us all, and you’re free to call that what you want, but it’s there, living at 40,000 feet. 

It’s what gnaws at us when we haven’t done our best. It’s what calls us out on our bullshit. It’s what points us in the direction we need to go for our own growth and development that we keep pretending not to hear. 

And that spirit will get louder and louder until the chaos of the decision you refuse to make drowns out that invitation. And at that point, if you’re lucky, that animating spirit calling forth the best in you might become a tornado siren, warning you of the impending cyclone you have brought upon yourself, simply by refusing to prepare for the storm by doing what you’ve been called to do. 

And what’s worse, is your refusal to look at yourself from the 40,000 foot view has not only had a negative impact on you, but it’s actively having a similar impact on those around you. 

You hate your job, or your partner, or the way you look, and complain to your friends and family every time you see them. Now they’re carrying the stress of your pain and also bracing themselves for the moment you inevitably bring it up—AGAIN—while actively doing nothing to change it. 

They can see you from 40,000 feet.

You’re not following the thing calling to you that you know could help others and yourself out of fear of… 

of what… 

of judgement? 

Judgement from whom, exactly?

People who love and support you?

No.

From people who don’t care to know or understand you and who have stall-out issues of their own. You’re afraid of the fools who, like yourself, are just as fearful as you are. You might call them “haters,” but they’re the bloody mirror you refuse to look into deeply enough to recognize it’s your own face staring back at you.

At that point, you have a single choice to make: engage with the nagging call from the mirror, or the nagging call from the spirit attempting to bring forth the very best within you.

When the animating spirit call comes, follow it. 

Follow it scared.

Follow it with hesitation.

Follow it without having a clue what’s going to happen. 

Follow it knowing you might look like a crazy person. 

Follow it with the level of faith that what’s calling to you is necessary to be born into the world, at the very moment you decide to be brave enough to step onto its moving path

to somewhere you’ve never been, 

with no guidebook, 

and no way to know where it’s leading. 

The alternative is to stay on the ground, in your town, in your job at your desk, or in your house on the couch, and look at pictures of what you might see at the 40,000 foot view. 

Love, Nicki