When I was going thru my training to become a pilot, one thing that was constant, my trust in my instructor pilot. I knew that he was well trained, had lots of experience and could get us out of any problem that I might cause in the plane.
I believed this because of his experience, his confidence and the way he took care of business. In the plane, he was in charge. When we would get into a situation that we could not control or a maneuver that we could not complete, we would give up the controls. We would say, “you have it” and let go of the controls. He would take over and everything would be fine.
During the eight months of flight school, I spent about 100 hours in a plane with an instructor. I was taught many different things from take off and landing to aerial maneuvers to how to fly thru weather using the instruments.
One of the planes that I learned to fly was a small single engine fixed wing plane called a Birddog. It was an Army observation plane and we controlled the plane thru the use of a stick. It did not have a wheel like most planes today.
One of the manuvers that I was taught was how to put the plane into a spin and bring it back to level flight. It was fairly easy to start the spin, we just slowed the plane down and pulled the nose up so that it was not hardly flying and it would begin the spin.
Now came the hard part, getting it back to straight and level flight. This plane was pointed almost straight down at the ground and spinning. The natural inclination was to take the stick and, if the spin was to the right, pull the plane back to the left. But, if we did this, it would begin spinning to the left and in a tighter spin.
The way to get this plane out of the spin and back flying the way it was supposed to fly was to take your feet off of the pedals and let go of the stick. If you did this, it would just fly its self right out of the spin and back to normal flight. If you would fight with the plane, it would continue to spin until it crashed into the ground.
Learning to do that was one of the hardest things that I had to learn in all of flight school. Learning to let go and let it happen.
In life that is one of the hardest lessons that we have to learn. Let it go and stay in the now. If I stay in my mind, I can build some very bad situations and solutions.
That is something that it seems as if we all have problems with. Letting things go and letting God or our Higher Power handle them. Taking my hands off of the controls and letting go.
If I keep my hands on the controls and don’t let Him handle things, I will spin right out of control and right into the ground. I will crash and burn.
I have to let go of the controls and let my “instructor pilot” have control of the situation and of my life.
Life is as good as I allow it to be.
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