Why Is My Runway Always Shorter Than Yours?
I’m getting tired of comparing and contrasting and feel the growing need for a good fuck it
Jets are big, powerful, and capable of flight.
People are big, powerful, and capable of flight as well – only a metaphorical one and not the actual liftoff we see at Cape Canaveral.
And while a Boeing 757 needs a runway a mile long to get safely into the air, people also need a runway, to lift themselves from childhood to adulthood and beyond. They need the space, the time, the assistance of two people or two hundred before they are safely “in the air” achieving their goals and going where they are destined to be.
I get this analogy. I imagined it and wrote it down.
This is why, as I lumber down the runway of life, gathering speed, pushing the throttle forward, and pulling back on the stick, I am chronically thinking – shit, I’m running out of runway and I’m going to crash into the trees.
When I was born, I looked up to my parents – literally. They were much larger than I was.
When I was five, I looked up to my teachers, the policemen on the beat, and most of the kids in my neighborhood.
When I was ten my mother was six inches taller than me and I was resigned to being vertically challenged for the rest of my life.
And then the genetically impossible happened. I grew a foot in three years.
At twelve I looked down at my parents, my teachers, my sister, and all but one neighbor who was fifty-something and a Viking, I think. I thought of him as a tree. Friendly, seasonal, and casting a great shadow.
I was finally able to see the “future” without having to ask everyone in front of me to move. At least I thought it was my future. Come to find out it was just, The Future, and everyone was getting a glimpse of it at the same time as I was.
I discovered that growing up is not just longitudinal. We don’t just outgrow our trousers and become more capable with each new size we step into. It’s incremental. It’s intentional. It requires thrust and speed and lift to get over the obstacles set in front of us by Man, Nature, God, or all of the above.
And I have a problem with this and believe others have experienced the same thing.
As much as we are told to not compare our lives and our accomplishments with anyone else, it’s almost impossible to not do this. If we weren’t already hooked into thinking this way, social media would have been a flop.
The internet would be limited to an online mall and Facebook, well FB would be nothing more than a scrapbook in one person’s attic.
Because they provide us with a steady stream of comparative data that we sweat over, get bug-eyed about, and run to the liquor cabinet for a shot every now and then before opening a new tab and a new “wound” and start bleeding all over again.
There must be some compulsive need to compare our lives with someone else otherwise how would we know if we’ve done anything good with them?
When we work out at the gym, we compare our body to someone else’s who we think is doing a good job and then see how much more or less we need to do.
When we’re at work, we’ll walk by another office, check out the décor, the size, and the quality of furniture, and then compare it to our cubicle or office, next to the rattling ice machine next door, and think, we made it or who are we kidding.
Even if we just had the best year of our lives, career-wise, we get sullen and sulk around thinking, why did she get the promotion when my GPA average was higher than hers in college and I’m taller?
Thus, the concept of a runway came to me years ago. The amount of metaphorical feet required for lift off to that grander, more spacious, and higher paying place that we’ve aspired to for far too long.
That we’re married – happily. Have a home that’s in good shape with a roof that doesn’t leak still falls short and we blame it on external forces.
The short runway. The excessive turbulence at lower levels that we constantly run into. The unfair headwind that keeps us on the ground when others are soaring. We walk heavily, scuffing our heels at every step, punching the air, and singing one lament after another all because we didn’t make the cut.
An arbitrary line that no one can see except us.
We set the limits that we should aspire to based on what we see read and talk about through social media, Saturday morning get-togethers, and Monday Night Football at Bob’s house.
We’ve been told from birth by parents, teachers, and God knows enough advertisers to last three lifetimes that we are essentially inadequate. Why – well because we don’t have, do, or believe in something that they’re selling and kind of get convinced that it must be true, because look who‘s talking about it?
Our favorite actress, athlete, or general celebrity.
We are hardwired to believe that there is truth hidden somewhere in these messages because the message itself strikes a chord.
Do you want longer, blonder hair? Do you wish you had a six-pack and not a muffin top? Do you long for a padded steering wheel in your hands and 300 horse under the hood or not? Well yes, yes, and yes.
They’re not selling neater penmanship, thicker paving stones, or tighter socks.
They’re selling those things, those realities that we pine for. A toner body. A prettier girlfriend. A fatter wallet and screw the bills, we’re making so much money each month we can pay our neighbor’s as well and not even notice.
Without beating this metaphor into submission, each and every one of us has a dream. To play shortstop for the Yankees. To sing like Eddie Sheeran. To start a company and be the next Elon Musk.
But most of us will fall short of this goal.
Will end up playing semi-pro with the rest of the guys at the Anheuser Busch plant. Will sing lead tenor in the church choir but never at Madison Square Garden.
That runway that those people took off on seemed just right. Not too short, not too long, able to get them into the air and chase their dream while the rest of us watched from the windows at Gate 237.
As we pick up our bags and take a taxi home, we’ll ask ourselves why them and not us. How did they beat the odds and as we chase our dream through their success where will we end up? Happy with lives and destinations?
Or parked along the side of the runway, hood up, tinkering with the engine, trying to get more RPMs out of it and hopefully getting over the trees.
And all because our lives don’t measure up. Really?
Again, says who?
Without self-help books and seminars would we know we needed help?
Without advertisers and Ph.D. programs in marketing, we would feel the inevitable tug on our well-being and believe we are falling short.
Probably yes, because instinct pushes us to survive. To live another day. To procreate. But instinct has come a long way baby and it looks a lot different than it did when the ice from the last Ice Age began to thaw.
Then, reality was that big bad and most times beautiful thing existing right in front of us – hard to miss.
Today reality is photoshopped, CGI’d, and generally morphed into 10,000 versions per minute through algorithms that show us time and again what we” want” to see until we actually believe it.
What good is possessing the career equivalent of a freaking Boeing 757 if it’s sitting at the end of your driveway with nowhere to go? That is, us being capable of great things; hungry and ambitious to achieve them, and then have the workaday world whiz by us heading for the exit and never casting a second look our way.
Runways are funny things. They’re actually retractable, like a painting pole so we can reach the corners. They look fixed because we’ve been told they are, until and unless we do something else – like buy this or that. Take that class. Suck a little fat from here and there, or just freeze it.
What if, and this is a question that realistically may never get answered because there are too many layers of other stuff on top of it. Like discovering the fossil remains of the first domesticated cat from 25,000 years ago. But what if, we stopped comparing? Stopped listening to others telling us what we needed. Stopped watching videos that espouse the fact that having anything less than 64 colors of lipstick is just wrong.
What would happen to us?
Would we still somehow know we were less than someone else (name unknown) until such time as we did what, exactly?
Runways are found at airports. They’re also located metaphorically deep within all of us. We long for all the inequities to vanish and have ours be just long enough, just wide enough so we don’t veer off into the ditches along the way, and bright enough so we can see where we’re going at night, in the fog or when the tears are getting in the way.
And I have a feeling that most are just right, like that story with the Three Bears and that cute little blonde-haired girl that ran like the wind.
Maybe all we need to do is think that they are and the next time we’re in the gym, don’t stress about that guy deadlifting 600 lbs., just note his good form and be done with it.
What’s the worst that could happen? That we get comfortable with who we are?
For God’s sake don’t tell the marketing guys.