Gliding

I was watching an interview of one of the rock stars in the counterculture movement of the sixties. She was asked about the difficulty of breaking in. She said that her first album was the hardest to get produced, but the easiest to write.

All the pain and anguish of being a poor, struggling artist fueled her creative drive and empathy with the downtrodden. After the first albums, and with a couple million in the bank, she had a hard time getting motivated.

A football coach with his division locked up was asked about his playoff concerns. He said his biggest challenge was keeping the fire going in the belly of his players.

I’m thinking about this because I received an email of congratulations because our paddling club hit a milestone in members that’s, as far as we know, about 50% larger than the second largest in the country. It ended with, “I guess you can relax.”

I don’t have the same problem as the aforementioned. We’ve been able to bring a lot of enjoyment and excitement to people, and have taken great pleasure in building something together that is eminently successful. How could anything be better than that? The only way it gets better is that we get even better.

Bill Wrigley was asked why he did so much advertising when he already had the dominant chewing gum company in the world. He said that when his pilot gets his plane off the ground, he doesn’t tell him to turn off the engines.

Wrigley didn’t believe in gliding and neither do it.