Heaven's teachings...

‘I want to take you up to the heavens, just as you have taken me’ – D.

…read the postcard on my birthday this year. There were five, perhaps six of them but this one, the very last one, caught my attention more than anything else.

As I turned it around I saw a picture of a hot air balloon and immediately felt like a child once again. I couldn’t help it but smile and laugh. Good as it might have been, the idea that I might have gotten a day at a spa didn’t comfort me. A day on a boat…well, that was okay. Now a hot air balloon, that was totally unexpected.

After the years I’ve lived and what I've been through I’m not easily surprised. I tend to expect anything from anyone and I have thought, in my foolish arrogance and wrongly at times that people are just plainly predictable.

Nearly two months passed by before the trip came to happen. It had been cancelled three times due to the weather mostly. The day before it all happened I was caught unprepared, we received that unusual call reminding us and that made the excitement even greater.

The day finally arrived, that weird morning I was filled with a mix of curiosity and fear of the unknown. The hot air balloon took off, we were lifted up in the air like a leaf in the faintest and calmest of winds.

Seconds later we were a hundred feet high, minutes later the distance became over a thousand feet. No noise was heard other than the flames warming the balloon’s inside. The wind had made a pact of peace with our beings, letting us enjoy the landscape down below.

An indescribable sensation took over me. I was just an insignificant man floating in the air above it all, powerless. Cars moved hurriedly like ants from one place to another. Dogs and horses covered what seemed like a very short distance. People tending their land, houses being built, children playing… It is such a big place we live in. I was humbled by the beauty of the sun appearing in the horizon, trying to climb higher than us in the skyline.

We are nothing, we can just die in an instant and the world will continue spinning, everyone will continue their daily lives despite their temporary hurting. Yet, we think we’re all that. No one’s indispensable. Whatever we do can, in a way, affect a lot of people, or just become lost in the large pond of meaningless events around us.

I have received the best gift of all, a time of introspection like no other, a moment where I have learned to appreciate life from a different perspective. One day I will pay it back.

Lesson Learned: Life is a great deal more than what I have thought until now. I will focus more on the big picture than on small meaningless details.