“There have to be reasons why you wake up in the morning and are excited to be alive.”

Bless you Elon Musk, and Space Ex. And to my friend Larry, who gave me the link to watch this – somehow Id missed it, streaming Netflix or watching TV and skipping the news (Because who isn’t, lately?)

I felt tears come to my eyes as I watched this Falcon Heavy huge rocket successfully launch a Tesla car (Musk’s), complete with an astronaut mannequin, an excerpt of StarMan by Bowie playing on the sound system, and a screen with DON’T PANIC written across it. The side boosters fell away and landed perfectly, in perfect coordination, on tiny landing spots. The beauty of it all was breathtaking. Musk’s sons, who also have launched their own (smaller) rockets watched, the youngest shaking a stuffie in excitement. The underlying sense of giddiness and fun.

Live feed of Rocket Man circling the earth…

I loved the whole thing – the people who were responsible for the success of each part of the launch standing, arms up in triumph, as each bit worked, perfectly. The cheering crowd of Space Ex employees, the humility of Musk whose first response to ‘How do you feel?” was something like “proud of the people who made this happen.”

We’ve spent a long time in a scarcity thinking mode. I know I have. We’ve been told over and over again about debts and losses and scary things and noise. I remember the 60’s when the first rockets rose, when humans touched space and loved it, how we all lived it and wore astronaut costumes and dreamt of the stars. I remember the first Mars landing and how I had a poster of the surface of Mars on my wall. All of life seemed so possible then.

We’ve been focusing on solving that one miserable problem. After another. After another. And they are legion.

But the problem with this scarcity mode is that we are walking, looking at our feet. It can be helpful when trying to keep from tripping, but the reason for ever plunging on somehow gets lost. We miss seeing the sky, dreaming with the clouds, breathing in the air.

(I’d say soaking up the sun, but I am reasonable. I live in Nova Scotia and have come to love our soft grays)

We’ve turned into managers. We’ve been working toward targets, without knowing why, we’ve lost the urge to dream the impossible – and that is, of course, the first step to making it so.

It’s self-defeating. I’m well familiar with the “Why should I try that – it’s already been done” mentality I scorned as a younger me. Every time I pick up my book to edit I wonder what the point is – there are so many books. I have so many right here in my apartment! Do we need another?

I try to do art. Why? I ask myself. The floor really needs cleaning and you should by rights be doing something productive, as vs playing.

I’m lucky in two ways. First, I studied a practical subject. A problem-solving subject: nursing. It’s led to me looking at things as problems to be solved. Second, I have surrounded myself with a gaggle of creative people (you know who you all are!) from artists to crafters to gallery creators to political agitators to gamers to ukulele players to knitters to the leader of the only Mohawk-led surfer music band…Nova Scotia is awash in these people, people outside the box, people not given to saying “no, but”. They default to “Yes, and.” I am so lucky to have them about.

They play, they dream. They may lose sight of the joy of it, or have to do the boring miserable problem solving to pay the rent, but a part of their souls still flies high, grasps joy.

I seriously need to stop whining to myself and do the same. Abundance thinking. Because we do live in abundance, even if sometimes it feels like it is an abundance of problems. And I am not talking about money abundance. Me, I’m talking about dream abundance. There is beauty in vision.

I’m off to go breathe some in.

PS: Do not try this at home. Professional abundance leaper

PS: Eton Musk takes on education in a TED talk below. I have to admit I agree with him. This is how I used to teach nursing, and it was a great way to learn.