we only see light on our darkest days
I spend most of my weeks planning. Companies can’t grow without spreadsheets, revenue forecasts, and expense reports. If staff don’t have a plan for the day, they either waste time, or start working on any old project that may not be helpful at all.
So plans are good, in my professional life, but the pendulum swings to the other extreme in my personal life. I have to summon tremendous amounts of mental energy to recall dates and dinner plans. My wife and I plan holidays over spaghetti dinners. The carbs power me through the conversation.
It’s not that I’m bad with dates. I just spend too much of my weeks planning. By the time I shut my laptop for the night, I’m running on reserves.
Besides, some of our best memories are the ones we never expected to make. For example – think about a favorite moment that makes you smile.
Okay. Are you smiling?
No? That’s the wrong day, then. Pick a new one. Choose a memory that elicits an involuntary giggle.
Are you laughing now? Okay, good. The memory you just recalled – was it planned? Were you trying to create that day/moment/night?
I’ll bet not because when I think about the times I’m smiling brightest, it’s not my wedding day. I did a lot planning before that day. Rather, it’s the night my wife and I waded into the icy waters of Lake Michigan to hop a fence protecting the park that overlooks Chicago’s Ferris Wheel (the fence bordering the lakefront was shorter). The Ferris Wheel looks way cooler in the moonlight than the sunlight.
We had just finished a meal of kebabs and pitas at a Greek restaurant, and as I picked up the check, I certainly didn’t ask, “Hey, do you want to go soak your pants in chilly water? Maybe watch people riding the Ferris Wheel, but not actually ride it?”
That memory was possible because we let it happen. We wandered the city without an agenda.
So, often, no plan is the best plan when it comes to making memories and building relationships.
We had no plan when I picked up Erin at a two-terminal airfield in the Southwest corner of Colorado. I knew we were planning to visit my family who lives there, and celebrate my cousin, who was moving to Seattle. Beyond that, we had no itinerary.
After eating dinner and watching the sunset, I asked my uncle for his favorite hike in the San Juan Mountains.
“Oh! You know what?” He turned to us with a smile. “It’s Colorfest this weekend. You’ll love Colorfest.”
“What’s Colorfest?” I inquired.
“Balloonists from all around the country fly their hot air balloons this weekend. They launch them near the river at sunrise. It’s pretty incredible. And often, the out-of-town pilots will need volunteer crew,” he shared.
“Which means,” he continued, “If you show up early enough, you just might get to launch and fly in one of the balloons.”
I slapped the couch in excitement. I was sold. “We’re doing that!”
I turned to see what Erin was thinking. Her expression said something to the effect of, “No chance I’m riding a wicker basket 2,000 feet in the air without more information and a year of safety training.”
“That’s a great idea! You’ll have fun,” my aunt added from the kitchen.
“What do you mean, ‘show up early?’ How do we know who the pilots are? Where do we get registered?” Erin quizzed my uncle.
“Oh, you know,” he said casually. “Just show up at the park before sunrise and join the pilot’s briefing. The flight director tells the pilots about weather for the morning. Just walk in with the group and ask around. Somebody will point you in the right direction.”
“Here,” he passed us the local newspaper. “The paper lists the time and place.”
“Done.” I didn’t need any more convincing. “What’cha think, Erin?”
“Well, I guess we should give it a shot. We can always hike in the afternoon, right?”
“Yes, deal. Fly first, hike later.”
“Morning y’all!” The loudspeaker croaked as Erin and I walked into an oversized carnival-style tent before sunrise. “We got biscuits, gravy, coffee, everythin’ you need before we get the briefing underway.”
“Biscuits?” I asked Erin.
“Definitely not. My stomach’s already nervous. I just want to figure out where the heck we have to check-in,” she said.
“I don’t think there’s a check-in station. I think we just have to ask people if they need help. You know, acting like we’re not completely new at this.”
“But we are. We stick out like sore thumbs,” Erin pointed out. “Look at that guy – he’s got wings clipped to his jacket and a buzzcut.”
After listening to the briefing, we made our way to the front of tent. As we walked, we heard someone shout, “Crew? Volunteers? Anyone?”
“Yes!” My hand shot up. “Us!” I grabbed Erin’s hand and rushed toward the voice.
“Okay, right over there,” the voice directed us toward a group of four wearing matching jackets.
“We’ll take’em,” the crew chief, Katie, confirmed.
We followed Katie out to her pickup truck, whose bed was full of balloon parts. An industrial fan, the wicker basket, a nylon canopy, fuel tanks, the works. We piled into the truck and drove a few minutes south as Katie laid out the ground rules.
“I’m your crew chief today, so that means whatever I say goes. Alright? You do what I say, and don’t do anything I don’t say, even if you think it’s right. Balloons are licensed aircraft, so we follow a certain process to make sure we’re always flying safely.”
It turns out that Katie served as a helicopter mechanic in the Air Force for a decade. She knew her stuff. Erin, queen of all things safety, listened intently.
“Once we get the balloon rolled out, we’ll start checking tethers, cables, and get the basket hooked up. Then we’ll inflate, alright?”
We nodded before getting to work. Twenty minutes later, as our pilot, Rick, began pumping hot air from the propane tanks into the canopy, I stood back wide-eyed.
The balloon grew like a King Cobra rising up from its coil. After the purple, yellow, and green canopy rose to its peak, it towered 100 feet overhead. It was impressive, to say the least. I had no idea hot air balloons are taller than most office buildings.
As Rick made sure his flight instruments were in proper working order, Katie gave us a pen and paper. “Alright you two. Want to go for a ride? Just sign these waivers and Rick will take you up.”
Flying in a hot air balloon felt very different from what I’d expected. It was quieter than an airplane. Steadier than a glider. More calming than thrilling. I guess you could say it was more levitation-than-jetpack.
As we climbed higher and higher, I understood why the festival had been dubbed “Colorfest.” Every color of the rainbow was represented in a perfect, 360-degree panorama. Yellow aspens and green, purple, and blue balloons were scattered across a canvas of an orangey-red sunrise.
“This is spectacular,” I whispered to Erin, who beamed as she clenched the basket.
“I don’t think we’ll forget this,” she whispered back.
We were watching the kind of beauty that makes you wiggle; like your mind can’t keep so much splendor to itself so it spills over, making your legs and arms quiver.
“I guess this is why you fly in the mornings, huh?” I said to Rick as he opened the burner to climb even higher. “So you can see all the colors with the sunrise?
“Not exactly,” Rick replied.
“It’s so our balloons fly better. Filling the canopy only creates lift when the air inside the balloon is much hotter than the air outside of it. The contrasting temperatures get us to liftoff. First light is always the coldest part of the day, so it’s easier to fly then.”
I stared into the massive, radiant dome above my ahead, cherishing the idea of contrast.
Obviously, I spend my weeks on the ground. I spend my weeks in motion, too. Working, working out, going there, coming back. But for a few minutes, I wasn’t on the ground, and we weren’t going anywhere.
You can’t actually steer hot air balloons, you see. There’s only one direction. Up.
There are no rudders to navigate sideways. You’re left to the wind’s mercy. You can’t even go down. Going down just means you’re choosing not to fill the balloon with hot air to force it to climb. So as the balloon drains of hot air, the temperature inside the balloon nears the temperature outside the balloon and you begin to sink.
We floated for a few more minutes, taking in the scene and pretending there was no basket below our feet. The silence of flying thousands of feet above the soil was interrupted only by the occasional jet blast to refill the balloon.
“Time to put her down,” Rick broke the silence. “Help me look for fences and powerlines, will you? Shout them out, even if you think I see them.”
“Can do!” Erin spoke up.
As we looked out for powerlines, I noticed a bright orange flag tracing our flight. It was Katie’s pickup, tailing our flight, ready to help us haul the balloon back to town and refill the fuel tanks.
“Alright Katie,” Rick radioed to the ground. “It looks like we’ll put down between that barn and house, about a mile south from where you are now.”
That was a little funny to me. Someone would be eating pancakes at their kitchen table one moment, and then and see our 100-foot balloon dropping into their backyard the next.
That’s how it had to work, though. We were running low on fuel, so we had to land, and land wherever the wind said we would land.
I think balloon rides mirror our human experience. Every day, we wake up to find there are two opposing forces that make up our lives. We rely on warmth — kindness, love, being good to each other — to keep us afloat in a cold, cold world.
When the cold of death, grief, and depression threaten to collapse and crowd us, we crave to fill our days with the warmth of laughter, celebration, and joy all the more.
Any toddler can tell you we love seeing balloons fly and hate watching them deflate. We appreciate good people and hate see bad things happen to them, too.
Just this past week, a friend lost his job. He’d worked for the same organization training nonprofit leaders for 15 years. Then, abruptly, he was told they were eliminating the position. To make matters worse, when I called him to catch up, he shared he’d just been diagnosed with cancer, too.
He’s such an upright guy that I started calling him the “Hall Monitor.” He’s the model example of how to conduct one’s self, and if he ever sees someone acting out of line, he has the courage to speak up. So why should the hall monitors of our world get cancer and lose their jobs?
I don’t think I’d prefer the reverse, by the way. Where all of the convicts and criminals contract carcinoma and go unemployed. That wouldn’t make the world any better. The happy people wouldn’t be any happier, and the sad people would just get sadder.
I guess a better question, then, is, why do we have to live in a world filled with darkness and evil? And I don’t only mean evil things happening to good people. I also mean the people who do evil things. Like shooting up a synagogue.
There’s something inside all of us that says senseless violence has no place in our world. Something cries out there is, in fact, an undisputable and immutable difference between good and evil.
The thing is, however, we can’t know what’s good if we don’t experience bad, and all share the same definition of what’s bad. If everything is good, or if good and bad are all the same, and merely left to the individual to define according to his/her preference, everything we experience would just be called “life.”
The contrast is a helpful, uncontested part of our human reality. We truly know light because of our darkest days. We know warmth because we feel cold. We treasure flying high after we’ve been brought low.
What I’m saying is that deep-dish pizza and beer never taste better than after a 90-mile bike ride in blistering heat. Without the physical ache, mental anguish, and total exhaustion of an endurance ride, that little slice of heaven wouldn’t be anything special. It would just be regular old pizza (which would be a shame, because pizza is already among the most superior food groups out there).
Now, you may be wondering, “What gives? I just wanted a story about hot air balloons. Why all the philosophical pontification?”
Well, I think it’s an important part of being human. The contrast of good and evil, warm and cold, light and dark, it all signals that there’s something far greater than the two opposites.
Our abject, visceral reaction to witnessing evil is driven by some objective basis upon which we differentiate good and evil. It’s the third thing outside of good and evil that makes us say, “That is just not right!” You see, the object we use to measure an item, and the item being measuring, cannot be one in the same thing.
I believe one of history’s greatest authors on this topic, CS Lewis, would agree:
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?
We all feel the world is not as it’s supposed to be. We feel this way because something transcendent, above and outside us, told us there’s a difference between good and evil. We couldn’t have arrived at this ourselves.
Or, as Lewis said:
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning. (see here)
In the world of hot air balloons, we have thermometers and barometers to tell us, with absolute certainty, differences in temperature and atmospheric pressures. Similarly, in the world of morality, there is a natural and absolute moral code that’s been hardwired into us. Someone gave us that compass – that conscience, if you will – to pilot us.
But, as our hot air balloon ride reminded me, the instruments we use to discern if we’re on or off course can’t put us back on course. Instruments don’t stop up us from crashing into other balloons – or crashing back to earth when we run out of fuel.
Just the same, having a conscience isn’t enough. Knowing the difference between shooting and saving someone doesn’t prevent mass murders.
As I shared, when you fly hot air balloons, you’re dependent on your crew chief and your chase vehicle. Otherwise, what do you do when you run out of fuel? When the propane tanks are empty and we can’t keep the warm flowing, we need someone outside our wicker basket, watching and waiting to scoop us up.
Likewise, we need someone outside humanity to lift us up when we run out of fuel and the cold, dark world overcomes us.
To return to Lewis’ perspective once more:
“God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there.” (see here)
To be certain, I’m not implying that evil is somehow noble or virtuous because its existence ultimately points us back to God. By no means. And if you may be tempted to feel I’m full of “hot air,” here, I too agree more proof is required before we can begin to arrive at the God of the Bible. Unquestionably, much more proof than a single hot air balloon ride could offer us.
But the takeaways we’ve come to are nonetheless helpful, I believe. And yes, they are much heavier than the conclusions my writing usually results in, but alas, the past week of news has been weightier than my normal.
So, in the end, I’ve come to learn that we’ll see light most clearly on our darkest days. We’ll find love most vibrant in the face of hate, and we’ll discover that compassion is most powerful when confronting malice.
Regardless of where you ultimately land on the issue of God, humanity, and the relationship between the two, let’s try our best to fill each other’s’ balloon with the warm things of life. When we have the opportunity, let’s chase down our friends who have run out of fuel and are plunging toward an unforgiving crash-landing.
Want to read more?Why stop now? Drop me your email, and I’ll send you a link to download a free preview of my latest book, Living Forward, Looking Backward, which has more stories just like this.
First Name *
Email Address *
Roger that - your free download is on its way. Make sure to check your email for the download link.
