I flew an airplane and went back in time

Well, the title describes half of it and the rest you’d soon discover. Cannot forget the twists in my intestine as the pilot did camel ride maneuver (for the uninitiated it’s the cartoony movement of up and down like a camel hump) 

For an adventure seeker in nature, I’ve never loved the concrete jungles though I’ve lived amongst many. I crave to be always back in the cocoon of the world free from the shackles of the mundane. 

Side note – If you guys haven’t watched FREE GUY go and watch it like NOW!

SPOILER WARNING

I could relate to the AI character GUY being an NPC (Non-Playable Character) waking up to the realization that he is stuck in a routine that is almost identical to how the majority of us are living our lives as well. From the time we open up our eyes and close them forever, it’s like everything is just as if we are a background player in our own lives, losing control to becoming compliant to what the world expects out of us. I didn’t know I could take the movie and interpret it in such a META way but hey it’s life and if we aren’t living it to our potential then what are we even doing?

Alright I got distracted there for a minute and that’s how I work and I’ve accepted the way my mind works in a nonlinear fashion. If you’re curious about it go ahead and read my ten-year evolution here. 21st September 2021 the day I turned 32, by some accounts I am still young but if you knew me even a bit you’d say I am an old soul and you’d not be wrong. The reason I say that is, your age is just a number but your consciousness, your experiences determine how you feel on the inside. 

I felt compelled to write this blog wasn’t so much to brag about my experience flying a plane, but rather to give hope to all the people who feel lost, who struggle with having a purpose, to anyone feeling disconnected with everyone and everything around them. I want to tell you, you are not alone, and let me take you back 7 years back to 2014. I wrote the following time capsule of a letter on my birthday 7 years back in 2014. I’ve read it countless times and every time I read it, it’s like I am reenergized seeing the journey I took from where I was to where I am now.

Until today I never shared it with anyone except my closest friend to motivate him when he needed, today I want to take that intimate piece of my life and share it with everyone. Now you may be seeing where I am going with the second part of my title, how I went back in time. 

Below is that letter, It is as raw as I wrote it 7 years back. I apologize in advance for the grammar, it was an emotional outpour in the spur of that moment and I don’t want to touch it up. 

So now that you’ve read that letter, I think you’d realize that the power of words cannot be underestimated, I’ve always found solace in journaling/writing my thoughts out and I can say with definite first-hand experience, it is magical in every sense. I’ve always been a reader, early in my life I found my best friends the books I read, and the worlds therein.

One of such was the influence of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. The following is an excerpt from Chapter 6. 

I envisioned 7 years back that I would not cave into mediocrity and the life everyone else expected to live. Have I got everything I envisioned, well life isn’t based upon what you accumulate in the material sense but the experiences you gather along the way, and boy I had hundreds of such experiences, the good and bad, the happy and sad, the thrills and boredom and everything else in between.

So looping back, being in the cockpit taking off is as surreal as it gets, you lose yourself for a moment there and feel as if this frame of steel can fly, what is stopping us to grow the wings of freedom and fly into the unknown. I want to take this moment to be grateful for everything and if it weren’t for the hard times I’d have not become the person I am today. 

Let this blog be a reminder to every soul out there, you don’t have to live a life limited by your beliefs, having the right mindset is the key, write down what you feel, write what you want out of your life, and then read it as often as you can. I guarantee you will never look back once you are on to discovering yourself. Step out of the rat race everyone is in and you will eventually see a new you, someone who doesn’t care what others think of you, someone who believes in him/herself.

Until next time, I leave you with the following quote by Tony Robbins 

 Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure

P.S: For anyone seeking to have time of your life flying a plane for a day in Karachi, go check out One Day Pilot program.