Excerpts from from 'A Gift of Wings' by Richard Bach.
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"You'd better be careful what you pray for," somebody once said, "because you are going to get it."
...From time to time, when I was barnstorming the Midwest a few summers ago, a passenger or two would say, "What a great life you have, free to go wherever you want, whenever... Sure wish I could do it." Wistful, like that.
"Come along, then" I'd say. "You can sell tickets, keep the crowds behind the wing, strap the passengers into the front seat. We might make enough money to live on, we might go broke, but you're invited." I could say this, first because I could always use a ticket seller, and second because I knew what the answer would be.
Silence first, then, "Thanks, but you see, I've got my job. If it wasn't for my job, I'd go..." Which was only to say that each wistful one wasn't wistful at all, each had prayed harder for his job than for the life of a barnstormer.
..We always get what we pray for, like it or not, no excuses accepted. Every day our prayers turn into fact; whom we most want to be,we are...
***
As I was reading this, suddenly it seemed like all the questions that were eating me were resolved and the confusion in my mind cleared. But also courageous should the person be, who can grow up to pray for what he yearns, than what the world taught him to desire. We all are born in a world where we are taught to wish for, and be content with simple things in life, like a full time job, a place to live, a fixed routine of the day and eventually suckumb to a feeling of incompleteness and be left with a nagging desire to break free. Great are the people who pray not just for a living but a 'LIFE' and go on to live it to the fullest. I yearn to be like them and though stand much short of the courage to be so, hope to acquire it. And Bach, one of my revered heroes now stands much taller.
