15 minutes ago Ryan McRae stuck the landing.
I met Ryan a couple of years ago. We made fast friends.
Ryan’s problem was that he was stuck.
He had a good job, one that he was good at and paid him well enough. He had a community of friends, way more of a social life than I ever have had.
But he was haunted. It was a good life… but it wasn’t a great one. Incremental changes helped him but he just sensed he was on the wrong journey.
He knew incremental change would never lead him to an entirely new path… just gradients of the path he was currently on.
I meet a lot of Ryan McRae’s. They are living a good life. But not the one they’d envisioned for themselves growing up. They’ve settled for meh. Safety. Practicality.
Ensnared by debts and fear they read books or watch a lot of television. Not for the acquisition of knowledge or even the entertainment value, but to mask the pain and escape the self-imposed prison sentence of a dissatisfied life.
Ryan was Different
He jumped.
Faced with his 40th birthday he knew that each day– indeed each hour— was chewing on his soul and stealing his dream.
So he walked into his bosses office, swallowed hard, and quit.
He put his stuff in storage.
And he took a contract job in Afghanistan.
And just a few weeks later he found himself climbing off a helicopter at a forward operating base of the United States Army– quite literally a war zone, to begin rebooting his life.
Ryan 2.0
Today. A year later. Ryan left Afghanistan for Dubai. He posted the picture above shortly after clearing customs.
He survived– a fete to itself.
He faced fear– fear of things that go boom, fitting into a culture of war he knew nothing of, the loneliness, and the dark passenger himself.
And he made it. He overcame.
And right now, as I write this, he’s enjoying the euphoria of realizing that he’s accomplished something so big, that has changed him so much, that’ll redefine the next 40 years of his story– that is, right now even, wordless to describe.
Make Life a Thrill
Not everyone should quit their job, take a job in Afghanistan, and completely reboot their life.
But we should all swallow hard, take a look at the person we are, and compare that to the person we know God is calling us to be.
And then we should take action. Not should. We must because doing nothing means writing regret as an epithet on our headstone.
Here’s the lesson I’m learning from Ryan:
You’ll never enjoy sticking the landing if you don’t overcome the fear of jumping.
So prepare yourself.
Swallow hard.
Jump.
Scream bloody murder.
Kick your dark passenger in the nuts.
Enjoy the moment.
Stick the landing.
Then, high five everyone in sight.
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