Today, as I flew from Mumbai to Ahmedabad, I found myself staring out of the window, watching the engine beside me. Bright orange, steady, unhurried. It kept pulling in air, fast, harsh, restless and throwing it out with even greater force. And that’s what pushed the aircraft higher and forward.
I realised something simple, yet profound.
The engine doesn’t avoid the wind.
It doesn’t complain that the air is too strong.
It doesn’t try to escape it.
It receives it. It converts it. It uses it.
If the engine ever stopped pushing back, stopped channeling what comes its way; it would stop flying.
Life is no different.
The challenges, the criticism, the pressures, the unexpected turns… they are like that wind. They may arrive with intensity. They may shake us. But they are also fuel.
We rise not by avoiding what meets us; but by transforming it.
Every harsh wind we face has the power to become the very force that takes us forward.
Today, at 35,000 feet above the ground, the sky reminded me:
Flight is not the absence of resistance; Flight is the mastery of it.
And somewhere over the clouds, I smiled, ready for my next stretch of sky.
