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Flying Life

• April 2015
• Hi Steph Climb Fly Dogs Travel

Guest post from my good friend Jeff Shapiro, who has dedicated his life to flying and climbing in many forms, and is also a truly lovely human, animal steward, husband and dad 🙂 I think he has some great advice for living a balanced and passionate life in the sky and on the ground.

Hey Steph my name is Gus i am a nineteen year old kid who just moved up to the North Georgia mountains to attend college. I have lived in South Georgia for a better part of my life and got the opportunity to come up here to play golf for college. In high school i saved up my money from a lawn mowing business i started to pay for my paragliding certification out in Oregon. The deal I made with my parents was that if i payed for the school they would buy my plane ticket to go west. And so the journey began. A couple years later i have had this constant urge to get to the skies as much as possible and it partly the reason i moved up here for college so that i can fly. Since i have been here i have met many great people that i fly with, and i am constantly trying to learn as much as i can so i can progress in this great sport. The reason i am emailing you is just to pick your brain and see how you got to where you are now. I am up here going to college and have not a clue on what i want to major in. All i want to do is fly; every chance i get i hop in my car and go the surrounding sites around where i live now. Your videos you post are awesome and i just wanted to know what you did to where you are getting maximum enjoyment out of life and have made it your job. I would love to somehow talk to you and ask a few questions. Hope to hear from you soon, until then happy flying.
Gus

Hey Gus,
Being a guy who has an overwhelming passion for flying and now, make my living doing it, Steph sent me your email with the thought that maybe I could provide a useful perspective. Walking a path that can both fulfill you and “keep the lights on” can be challenging at best. I hope you don’t mind if I pass on a few things that I’ve learned over the years with hopes that it might be helpful?

First, it occurs to me that everything I’ve ever done or learned has somehow perfectly prepared me for something later in life. Most times, I don’t even understand what “it” might be for or how “it” might affect me but, when a trip, job or situation requires experience, I often find myself thinking “ahh…..that’s why I learned that!” Every experience we have builds into an ability to reference and react to new experience with a widened perspective. Think of it like thermals. When you climb in thousands of thermals in your paraglider, each behaving differently, your repertoire of experience allows you to be more relaxed and more efficient. Life is like that. Often in life, you might not know what’s around the next corner but generally, if you’ve lived and learned with a “beginners mind”, your ready for whatever you might find. My point is that although college classes might not be flying, what you learn inevitably will be helpful in ways you don’t even know yet. You don’t have to “fit in the box” but, for instance, a chance to learn how to be a skilled writer or photographer could lead you in a direction, and on adventures, that you currently haven’t imagined.

With that said, driving toward a career or profession for the sake of making money while doing something you don’t like, simply so you can continue living so that you can continue making money by doing something you don’t like is a pretty lame way to live.

Turns out for me, the choice to be happy is all about two main components. First, I simply chase my bliss. The second “key” has been to focus on gratitude.

Bliss for me is flying, it’s climbing, it’s family and my creatures (4 dogs, 2 cats and a bird;-). If I focus on the best parts of my life and how they fulfill me as a person, the decision to “be happy” is an easy one to make. As a happy dude, I can then give the best of myself to the people I care about and what I love to do ends up having a positive affect on people I interact with. Also, if you chase your passion and bliss, it’s easy to feel grateful for the life we get to live. All of life, good or bad, can be considered opportunities to learn which is, again, always a good thing. Being grateful for the chances to live life, whether relative to education, flying…. whatever, makes happiness the natural result and happiness is contagious, which is cool.

Back to your question, “how do I chose a path that allows my flying to remain a focus, and still be able to make a living, maybe by flying somehow?” Having asked that same question, I’ve learned that in essence, continual adventure was really what I was after and if I remained true to that, the rest will inevitably fall into place.

All of the best adventures of my life started only with the goal to experience and have been, at some level, successful only by putting one foot in front of the other as opposed to being concerned with a goal or result. Chase your bliss, work hard, finish what you start, find gratitude for every opportunity, and make it your goal to laugh as much as possible and the adventure that is your life will lead you in the right direction. Whether supporting the brand image of a company you believe in, writing or documenting your flying adventures with photos or footage, or doing a job that is completely unrelated, if you love what you’re doing and your motivations are pure, finding a way to combine that stoke for flying with a way to support your passion for it is totally possible.

A quote I’ve been living by for the last 20+ years is this: “The ripest piece of fruit in the top of the tree is not the prize, the true prize is the choice to climb into the tree in the first place”. Make choices that lead to fulfillment, inspiration and passion and you can’t go wrong. Hope to see you at cloud base some day!

Here is a quote and link to a cool vid I recently watched. Check it out. I think it applies.
“Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories”
https://vimeo.com/27531088
Jeff