When flying out of busy airports throughout the country, pilots often have to wait in a queue of airplanes before moving up to the runway line. As a pilot, you sit in the cockpit, having completed all but the last few items on the pre-takeoff checklist, inch toward the runway, and wait for the tower controller to release you by calling out your airplane’s name (in my case, “One Romeo Alpha”) and uttering three magical words: clear for takeoff.

You release the brakes, key the microphone and let the controller know you were listening: “One Romeo Alpha, clear for takeoff.” Or, if you are in a particularly jovial mood, “One Romeo Alpha’s rolling.” You do the final few things on your checklist and then subvocally recite the mnemonic “lights” (all appropriate lights are on), “camera” (transponder is set, which allows you to be “seen” on radar), “action!” (all engine gauges are where they should be), you look to the sky to make sure you aren’t inadvertently rolling into an approaching airplane that the controller might have missed, cross the huge threshold marks on the runway, and line up on the centerline. The great moment has arrived. With your right foot on the rudder pedal you gently but firmly firewall the throttle. The engine wakes up, roars to its maximum, and the carriage in which you are blessed to sit rolls down the runway as you anticipate leaping off the earth in a single bound. Then, as the wings split the air unevenly, you lift off the earth, defying both the gravity of the earth and the gravity of life below.

It has been said that flying small airplanes is “hours of boredom filled with moments of terror.” But if that were all it was, none of us would ever climb up into another cockpit. There is a magic to flying not unlike the magic created by the best magicians. By craftily combining the laws of physics with the audience’s desire to believe in the impossible, magicians create awe-inspiring reactions. Indeed, awe is the feeling we get when we move into the transcendent space of doing that which by all rights should not be doable. Like magicians, pilots use their skills to do the thing that God or evolution did not grant us the natural ability to do. We don our mechanical flight suits and guide human crafted marvels of engineering to break the chains of gravity, allowing those of us fortunate enough to sit up front to see the world around us in an entirely different way.

By doing that which seems impossible, flying becomes a symbol of hope, a reminder that the obstacles in our path are only just that. It is a reminder that there are ways to break free of even the most daunting of challenges.

It is in just that spirit that I inaugurate my new blog, “Clear for Takeoff.” It will be about aviation, but I will continue to write about the things that have consumed my life and have interested me up to this point: autism, religion, writing, management, psychology and psychotherapy, photography, and whatever else moves me in the hope that it will move you too.

The “repurposing” of this blog imitates the repurposing of my life, so with the three liberating words that will be this blog’s moniker, let’s get off the ground and enjoy the limitless sky ahead of us. If you haven’t already done so, hit the “subscribe” button on the right, and join me for the ride.