We have all experienced sitting in the car at a stoplight when the person next to you suddenly moves forward slightly. Your reaction is to press the brake so forcibly that you nearly break your ankle. It also relates very well to the experience in the automatic car wash, when moving arms of scrubbers and nozzles of jetting water sends you careening through the machine.
Well, I confess that I sometimes perceive other things differently. Ride with me on an elevator sometime.
I want to go to the 14th floor. I step into this room with a lot of buttons on the wall. I press the button marked 14 and I hear a motor and some cables rattling. Suddenly the earth is pulled away and the fourteenth floor begins to drop to my level. The doors open and I step out. It’s remarkable!
Later, when I leave, I step back into the room and press the lobby button. The motors and cables groan as the lobby level is pulled back to my room, then I step out to continue my journey.
I learned this new way of thinking after a very successful Hawaii vacation several years ago. Instead of the normal vacation of moving from one stop to another, unpacking packing, island hopping… instead we took a Hawaiian cruise tour.
I sat in a deck chair in the sunshine, and the islands came to me one by one. I never packed or unpacked, I just sat quietly sipping my infinite diet cola. The diet cola came to me in the same way. Delightful! It was the best vacation.
I am now working on that cylindrical tube that we call an airplane. Somehow the captain has the ability to repel the earth at the same time as spinning it at great speed. With a great deal of math analysis, the captain adjusts the spin direction so that the destination appears below us, then the captain pulls the earth closer and closer to us until we are parked at the gate.
Everything is experienced from your own perspective. Own it!
