--- id: flying-free-28-move-forward-to-land title: Chapter 28 – Move Forward to Land category: Personal Reflection predicted_narrative_arc: limited-view-to-expanded-purpose sentiment: inspirational emotions: - inspired - reflective - motivated keypoints: - Stagnation kills whether in flight or personal purpose - Empire State Building view revealed teeming city life and limitless opportunities - Treadmill motion without progress must be replaced by forward steps toward goals - Heart must keep beating; crisis requires restarting motion or life stops - After loss or crisis, fill time with activity and continue moving forward summary: The narrator recounts a high school trip to New York City and the view from the Empire State Building that shifted his perspective from an Indiana farm to seeing himself as part of a larger, active society. He draws parallels between maintaining airplane airspeed, a beating heart, and the necessity of forward motion in life to avoid stagnation after crisis or retirement. The chapter stresses choosing purpose, stepping off the treadmill of empty motion, and staying busy to keep living fully. tags: - faith - work - warmth - conviction - moving-forward - empire-state-building - new-york-perspective - indiana-farm - life-in-motion - captain-sulley - move-forward - stagnation-warning sycophancy: 0 truth_score: 8 entropy: 3 updated: '2026-09-08T20:49:30Z' vault_stage: 07_CODEX headwaters: COMPA prefix: COMPA enrich_status: ok enrich_blockers: [] enrich_method: llm pipeline_filename: COMPA_2026-09-08_chapter-28-move-forward-to-land.md proposed_topic: Wisdom lane: Wisdom description: You must keep moving forward to maintain lift. Dean uses the powerful image of Captain Sulley’s Hudson River landing to show that progress — not perfection — saves lives. corpus_topic: Wisdom --- # Chapter 28 ## Move Forward to Land – Keep Moving to Grow Stronger **Full book:** https://deanrush.net/downloads/flyingfreebook.md --- ### Context for the Reader This chapter drives home one of the most practical principles in the book: stagnation kills. Whether it is an airplane losing airspeed or a person losing purpose after retirement or crisis, the message is the same — keep moving forward. The reference to Captain Sulley’s “Miracle on the Hudson” is especially powerful. --- In order to maintain airspeed in an airplane, you must be constantly moving forward. It is imperative to be constantly moving to progress to a new position. I discovered an entirely new perspective on life by observing, for the first time, the view from the top of the Empire State building in New York City. The experience caused me to move to advance to a new understanding of life. I remember that experience as a senior in high school, when I had been fortunate enough to win a trip to the East Coast. Of all the things I experienced on that trip, the most memorable was standing up on top of that building, looking out at the magnificent metropolis, and experiencing the sight of the teeming humanity in the city spread below me. It was an awesome experience that motivated me to be a part of what was happening in our country. I was inspired by the intensity, the people, and the fact that there was so much activity. There is always something happening around us, but in New York it seemed we were part of the action. When we observed the people in that city they seemed to have endless energy. I realized that I had been looking at the world from a very limited perspective and I had to move forward to see so many things that were new and remarkable. I looked down from the top of that building and observed the seething movement of life spread out below me in that metropolis. The people scurried around like ants and there was a constant flow of movement. Sometimes our lives are like that and we sit and watch the perpetual motion of the people; however, we lose some of the impact if we do not become a part of the movement. Sometimes it seems our lives are on a treadmill and we are in motion but go nowhere. We need to step off the treadmill, walk forward, and become part of the scene we are observing to really realize the full impact of the experience. Only then can we be moving to a goal that is worthwhile. We will never move forward just walking on the treadmill. When I went back home to my Indiana farm after the eye-opening experiences in New York, I began to realize the gravity of what I had experienced. My perspective on life changed. On the farm the flat land seemed different. The difference was my perspective and how I looked at society. I began to realize that I was a part of the society in New York and in Indiana. I had limitless opportunities to become a part of the activity in the world around me. I had to choose my purpose, but there were endless possibilities. To really expand ourselves in life and move out of our comfort zone and taste life, it may be necessary to find a different observation point and proactively move forward to new environments. Months after returning from New York I still wanted to remember that experience overlooking the city. I desired to learn more about the entire environment in that large metropolis. There was something that intrigued me about believing that those millions of people who lived in that teeming society were all involved in life. We, the people in my farming community, and the people in that big city, were alike in many ways and yet different as well. Our worlds shared the experience of life, the good and the bad. I sought to learn about city life and felt people there should learn about my environment as well. If we could accomplish that objective we could begin to understand how we find solutions to the problems we encounter. It was necessary to learn more about the culture and the objectives of those people. The common link for us all was that we were involved in life. Some were thriving and some struggling, but we were all clinging to life. We were living life one breath at a time and one step at a time. If we stopped breathing or striding forward everything would stop. Imagine what would happen in New York if for a moment everything stopped. We are all destined to make something happen. If you are currently undergoing a crisis with your job or life, you may probably feel that everything has stopped. You must find a way of getting back into that motion of life. It is up to you to take the action to jumpstart life again. If your heart stops and there is a trained medical technician near, the technician will immediately begin to pump your chest or use a defibrillator to electrically shock your heart into action. If the heart remains unresponsive, then it will die. The heart must continue to the next beat for you to sustain life. It must continue beating and keeping the blood in our veins moving. There is always a need for the next contraction of the heart muscle to keep us alive. Your life is similar: if it stops due to a crisis it must be restarted or you die. The heart is constantly moving forward to take the next beat. You must determine whether or not to continue. There are those who give up on doing anything with life, and yet want to live. Their existence is pretty pitiful, though. They prevent themselves from moving forward. God built us to go forward and to not stop. If we can move in a new direction, life is again constant. Moving water never becomes stagnant. I preach a lot of funerals and I have told many of the loved ones of people who have died that they should not stop being busy. Their loved one kept them busy in life and full of love. If that person were alive they would expect them to continue being busy. Fill up the time with activity. Move forward with life. Even if you are in crisis it is important to continue moving forward. If you are flying an airplane and about to land, you try your best to touch down as softly as possible. You slow to land the plane, but you must continue moving forward or you lose lift and settle too quickly. If you are recovering from a crisis and trying to find a new direction you also have to attempt to land as easily as possible and cushion the touchdown. Be proactive in moving forward with life. Don’t just stop. Remember, - Maintain control - Analyze the situation/take proper action - Land as soon as practical Medical studies on retirement are very revealing. People who retire and do nothing after retirement dramatically increase their chances of death soon after retirement. If a person, however, decides to find another goal in life and stays busy doing something purposeful after retirement the chances of a longer life increase dramatically. Retirees find that it is always beneficial to involve themselves in another job, active hobby, or a project that requires activity. I suggest using the talents you used in your vocation for a new mission or job. I have found it has worked for me. If you stop being productive in life, you wither up. If a tree ceases to grow leaves, it dies. If a river ceases to flow, it becomes stagnant. We are meant to grow and move forward. Conversely, nothing in the Bible says quit. In fact, it says quite the opposite. In Judges 20:39, Benjamin actually kills the soldiers under his command who said they were going to retire from battle. He had no use for them. Certainly it was a dramatic action to eliminate those soldiers, but he had no use for people who were not contributing to the cause ahead. I am not saying that R&R in retirement is all bad, but I am, personally, convinced that we are supposed to continue living and contributing to society. It is important and biblical to make a positive influence on the people around you. They need your experience. As I write this book I am well over sixty years old and enjoying retirement from my lifelong profession of managing people and aviation companies. I thoroughly enjoyed that work and all the great people whom I met during my working years around aviators. The Lord led me to another profession that I am now enjoying even more than the first career because it allows me to use many of the skills learned in my earlier experiences. Those learned skills now contribute to my present vocation as a pastor. I am now better able to understand what people are going through when they have a crisis because I have endured many of the problems they are encountering. It is much more credible to a person who is going through a job loss for me to offer advice from my experience rather than to tell them I am sorry but I can’t understand how you feel. I can now tell them how I got through that same event in my life. My purpose is to inspire them to not quit. They must move forward and find new purpose. At a younger age I could not have provided that same credibility in helping other people with problems. It was necessary to have experienced some problems myself before I could help others. You cannot take a step toward solving a problem unless you move your feet toward a solution. Only you can direct your life to go forward. We can become so engrossed in examining the problem that we forget the objective of the exercise is to move forward, to land the airplane we are flying, and eventually solve our problem. We need to extricate ourselves from a dilemma. Use your experience and share it with others by looking down at your life, utilizing your life experience, and putting it to work in a positive way to help others. When we help others we quickly learn we are also helping ourselves. Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 2:1(NIV), “Come now, let’s give pleasure a try. Let’s look for the ‘good things’ in life.” One of the most pertinent facts of the brilliant landing Captain Sulley performed on the Hudson River was that he correctly traded the altitude for airspeed with his airplane. He had to move forward at a positive enough rate to avoid a stall and not so fast that he would not be able to stretch his glide to reach the objective of the Hudson River. He accomplished those objectives by moving forward, not quitting, or giving up. He moved constantly toward his objective and it resulted in a safe landing which saved 156 lives. You need to move forward in your crisis and gain strength from the experience. --- **Next chapter:** Enjoy the Moment – Landing Brings Relief **Full book:** https://deanrush.net/downloads/flyingfreebook.md