Running from Safety
by Richard Bach
[ Introduction ] [ Quotes ] [
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Introduction:
A half-mile up, suspended by nylon wings and the promise of good
lift, life hanges on a pledge. Richard Bach made that pledge, fifty
years before, to return to the frightened child he used to be and
teach him everything he had learned from living. His promise went
unfulfilled until one day, hovering between earth and sky, Richard
encounters Dickie Bach, age nine--irrepressible challenger of every
notion Richard embraces....
In this exhilarating adventure, Richard and Dickie probe the
timeless questions both need answered if either is to be whole: Why
does growing spiritually mean never growing up? Can we peacefully
coexist with the consequences of our choices? Why is it that only by
running from safety can we make our wildest dreams take flight?
Quotes:
- "You either plan for what's ahead or you fight with what
you've got: worry is a waste of time."
- "A major rule you forgot, Roles. Every game we play, we slip
into a role, a game identity with which to play. We decide we're
rescuer, victim, leader-with-all-the-answers,
follower-without-a-clue, bright, brave, honorable, crafty, dull,
helpless, just-trying-to-get-along, diabolical, easygoing,
pitiable, earnest, careless, salt-of-the-earth, puppet master,
comic, hero... we choose our role by whim and destiny, and we
can change it anytime we want."
- "All we see of someone at any moment is a snapshot of their
life, there in riches or poverty, in joy or despair. Snapshots
don't show the million decisions that led to that moment."
- "Life does not require us to be consistent, cruel, patient,
helpful, angry, rational, thoughtless, loving, rash,
open-minded, neurotic, careful, rigid, tolerant, wasteful, rich,
downtrodden, gentle, sick, considerate, funny, stupid, healthy,
greedy, beautiful, lazy, responsive, foolish, sharing,
pressured, intimate, hedonistic, industrious, manipulative,
insightful, capricious, wise, selfish, kind or sacrificed. Life
does, however, require us to live with the consequences of our
choices."
- "If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for
it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its
victim."
- "Our true country is the land of our values, and our
conscience is the voice of its patriotism."
- "We don't have rights until we claim them."
- "When we put up with any situation that we don't have to put
up with, it's not because we're dumb. We put up with it because
we want the lesson that only that situation can teach, and we
want it more than freedom itself."
- "Happiness is the reward we get for living to the highest
right we know."
- "Good and evil are not what our parents told us, not what
our church tells us, or our country, not what anybody tells us!
All of us decide good and evil for ourselves, automatically, by
choosing what we want to do!"
- "Organized religion is God-in-a-web, the Great Spider at the
center of a thousand doctrines and rituals and mandatory
believing. People die in that web. Please, no organization!"
- "Because a name is a label and as soon as there's a label
the ideas disappear and out comes label-worship and
label-bashing and instead of living by a theme of ideas people
begin dying for labels, and the last thing you think the world
needs is a new religion?"
- "We wait all these years to find someone who understands us,
I thought, someone who accepts us as we are, someone with a
wizard's power to melt stone to sunlight, who can bring us
happiness in spite of trials, who can face our dragons in the
night, who can transform us into the soul we choose to be. Just
yesterday I found that magical Someone is the face we see in the
mirror. It's us and our homemade masks."
- "The world's not a sphere... it's a big floating pyramid. At
the bottom of the pyramid is the lowest life-form you can
imagine, hateful, vicious, destroying for destruction's sake,
devoid of empathy, one step above consciousness so savage it
self-destructs the instant it's born. There's room for that kind
of consciousness, lots of room, right here on our triangular
third planet… At the top is consciousness so refined it barely
recognizes anything but light. Beings who live for their loves,
for their highest right, creatures of perfect perspective, who
die with a loving smile upon whatever monster would strike them
down for the fun of watching someone die. Whales are like that,
I think. Most dolphins. Some people... the human beings among
us."
- "Flying's still a fantasy," I said, "for a lot of us. How
many fantasies include disease? Live enough of what you've
always dreamed of doing and there's no room left for feeling
bad."
- "I can't be distressed over what I don't control."
- "Crying does zero good, I found out. Feelings don't change
things. It's knowing that matters, and I've got a lot to learn."
- "With every choice you risk the life you would have had;
with every decision, you lose it."
- "Run from safety doesn't mean destroy yourself," I said.
"You don't strap on a racing plane until you learn to fly a Cub
first. Little choices, little adventures before big ones."
- "Here's what you do: You keep working, and watch for
coincidence to come strolling your way. Watch carefully, for it
always comes in disguise."
- "Like attracts like. It'll surprise you as long as you live.
Choose a love and work to make it true, and somehow something
will happen, something you couldn't plan, will come along to
move like to like, to set you loose, to set you on the way to
your next brick wall."
- "Whatever We Hold in Thought Comes True in Our Experience;
Like Attracts Like; we experiment with the Law of Changing
Appearances, to make our outer world reflect our inner."
- "Dear God, I thought, don't give me a job, give me ideas,
and let me take it from there!"
- "When we put up with any situation that we don't have to put
up with, it's not because we're dumb. We put up with it because
we want the lesson that only that situation can teach, and we
want it more than freedom itself."
- "Avoid problems and you'll never be the one who overcame
them."
- "I am ," I told the world. "I am neverborn, neverdying
individual expression of infinite life, choosing spacetime for
my schoolyard and playground. Came here for the fun of it, to
join again with old friends, to challenge again grand dear
enemies. . ."
Reviews:
An extended
dialogue between Bach and his inner child comprises the latest book
from the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. While hang-gliding
one afternoon, Bach is reminded of a promise he made to himself when
he was a child: to write a book containing the sum of all he has
learned and deliver it to his nine-year-old self, Dickie. But Bach
finds that Dickie is angry and hurt at having been locked away for
the last 50 years. Slowly a dialogue emerges, as Bach tries to pass
on his years of experience and in return relives some buried
memories, particularly the events surrounding the death of his
brother Bobby. What results is a kind of Richard Bach primer,
summing up the author's thoughts on time, love, death and God and
laying out a belief system not unlike George Bernard Shaw's idea of
the Life Force. Participating in this shared voyage of discovery is
Bach's wife, who contributes her own insights and acts as a kind of
reality check on her husband. Though the concept here may strike
some as Philosophy Lite, the book-thanks in large part to Bach's
sincerity-deftly skirts sentimentality and becomes, ultimately, a
real and affecting creation. -- Publishers Weekly
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