Launch!

Onward and Upward!

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

I am here to announce that I am starting something.

And what is this thing I’m starting? I call it Launch.

What is Launch?

It is the recognition that it is time to get started. It is planting a flag in the ground and saying, “this is my life, and I am here to live it.”

It is the recognition that the things I could do are not always the things I should do — unless there is a reason to do them. It is about repatriating failed starts and turning dead dreams into empowering choices, rather than burdens.

It is also the recognition that there are seemingly innumerable things you could do, and that you are here to begin doing them, through narrowing down which one to begin with first.

And as you are allowed the time, and resources, you will keep going till you are finished.

There have always been things I wished to do; some quite compelling. There are a few things I toiled over in secret, which became my solace or escape. I found myself inspired at the thought of unbounded pursuit, only returning to the drudgery of the life of linearity.

Whether in the highly abstract theorizing that expanded the way I viewed the universe, or it was a whim of a creative project that channeled something new, I had often found it easy to doubt or retreat from a more active and public pursuit, rather than try and fail (and be mocked or ridiculed).

However, this seems, in retrospect, almost pathological. That is why I am letting go of my reticence. I am letting go of my fear. Who cares how old I am, or how foolish I think THEY think I am.

Launch is about being myself, trying things, and waiting to see if they will fail or succeed on their own merits, rather than performing a post mortem before they were even conceived.

That has been my folly.

But no more.

While Launch may not change the world in a day, just because you begin the countdown on a rocket, doesn’t mean it has already touched the moon’s surface.

Launch begins in the ether of imagination, works its way down to the ground through drawing boards and proposals, before it is built and lifts off again.

It takes the work of many. But the process of Launch takes on the impossible task and gives it form.

And that is one of the important things Launch will do; give form to the good of whatever I can imagine, for the good of the world.

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Launch is a way of seeing the world, and where I connect with it.

Launch is drawing down a vision of the future into the space I create for it. It is where I build the vessel to contain and channel that new light.

The amazing thing is that the light is already here. All I have to do is get to work building. I do not have to have a complete idea, but just even the beginning of one I am willing to commit to seeing through to completion.

That completion may be that I assess an idea was only a stepping stone, and not the thing I was building. That it was part of something, and not the thing; and maybe something I had to get beyond, in order to see around it to the end point it was obscuring.

And also it could be the thing I think is the end-point turns out to be another stepping stone. So I keep going with anticipation that something even greater is ahead, than what was before.

Launch is about letting go of something, in order to make space for something else. It is about valuing yourself, and your time, and as a consequence, you can give your best to others because you have assayed the proper value of what you have to give.

Launch is about saying no to things that needlessly take up your time, so you can say yes to the things that really matter.

It is about becoming the leader you have always been, but retreated from the platform and abdicate command because you didn’t feel worthy, or worse, an impostor.

But that is all the past, because with any launch you necessarily have to leave something behind. To go forward, you move away from the point where you stood, to a new destination ahead. And if there is anything I have learned is that when you move forward, you will find yourself moving upward.

Because you can’t get too far without encountering an obstacle. But that is no obstacle. Just because it is perpendicular to the surface where you walk, does not make it a barrier. It is there to help you rise higher. It was put there for you to scale. And when you have scaled it, then you can move forward again. That is the process, and you know what it really is, is: Onward and Upward.

With Launch, it does not mean that today is the day everything is done; not at all. Today, rather, is the day where everything begins.

Just you setting a time for your own Launch sets something in motion. Sitting down to write this sentence for me was a beginning. Because everyday you set out on your Launch, you are going to move forward. And if when you move forward you encounter something in your way, you have to push yourself above it and climb, then you will move higher as you make your way ahead.

Every day you are going to live more freely because you let go of things you used to carry around. Today you are moving forward. Tomorrow you are moving upward. And repeat that every day after.

You will never reach your destination until you step forward. Today is the first step.

T-0 to Launch!