Helicopter Life Quotes

Fury didn’t stop her prep. “Bryce was a ghost for a long while, Hunt. She pretended she wasn’t, but she was.” The helicopter finally pulled into the air. “You brought her back to life.

On the 30th of April 1975, American helicopters flew out of Saigon in an ignominious retreat as the tanks of the People’s Liberation Army of Vietnam rumbled into the grounds of the American Embassy in Saigon.

On the 30th of April 1975, American helicopters flew out of Saigon in an ignominious retreat as the tanks of the People’s Liberation Army of Vietnam rumbled into the grounds of the American Embassy in Saigon. (A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume Two)

Yeah. A feeling. Like the whole point of my life from the alleys in Bangkok to the yachts and private island to coming here like a crazy person trying to fly a helicopter like all of it from birth to here point A to point Z was all some big cosmic trick to get me to meet you. - Sanjit to Lana

Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically positive expectations: Be happier. Be healthier. Be the best, better than the rest. Be smarter, faster, richer, sexier, more popular, more productive, more envied, and more admired. Be perfect and amazing and crap out twelve-karat-gold nuggets before breakfast each morning while kissing your selfie-ready spouse and two and a half kids goodbye. Then fly your helicopter to your wonderfully fulfilling job, where you spend your days doing incredibly meaningful work that’s likely to save the planet one day. But

No matter how you define success, you will need to be resilient, empowered, authentic, and limber to get there.

Looking down on it from the helicopter, with a bottle of Jack in my left hand, a bag of pills in my right hand, and a blond head bobbing up and doen in my lap, I felt like the king of the world.

In retrospect, this seems to summarize all the insanity of that time. Guy is standing on top of a burning building. Helicopter arrives, hovers, drops a rope ladder. Climb up! the man leaning out of the helicopter's door shouts. Guy on top of burning building responds, Give me two weeks to think about it.

I love those dark moments in Peanuts. I love that they're in there, that Charles Schulz put the sad lonely bits of himself into the comic. I love the silliness too, the dancing Snoopy strips. The little boy Rerun drawing "basement" comics about Tarzan fighting Daffy Duck in a helicopter. Those are the bits that keep me reading. The funny parts! The fun parts. The silly bits that don't make any sense. And when I get to the sad lonely Peppermint Patty standing in a field wondering why nobody shook hands and said "good game," well, it works because that's not all she was. I try to think that way about everything. That's the kind of person I want to be.

Some kids tell me their parents are never at home. How I wish. I never have a minute to myself, except in my room. Our back yard is no escape. Every time I sit by the pool, Mom is at the kitchen window doing this and that. Always watching.

The kids filed quietly to the edge of the strip to wait for the helicopters. Other Marines stopped to watch them, wanting to say an encouraging word yet not daring to break into their private world — a world no longer shared with ordinary people. Some of them were experiencing the last hour of that brief mystery called life.

The whole idea of losing one's virginity is kind of ridiculous. To lose something implies carelessness. A mistake that you can fix simply by recovering the lost object, like your cell phone or your glasses. Virginity is more like shedding something than losing it. As in, "Don't worry, Mom. You can call off the helicopters and police dogs. Turns out - get this - I didn't actually lose my virginity. I just cast it off somewhere between here and Monterey. Can you believe it? It could be anywhere by now, what with all that wind.

She feels like the first drags of fresh cigaretter but last crunches of cherry suckers. She feels like final coats of nail polish. She feels like lines of coke. She feels like knuckles you crack after a long day. She feels like Miami rain. She feels like empty football fields. She feels like full stadiums. She feels like absinthe. She feels like dangling from a helicopter. She feels like classical music. She feels like standing on a motorcycle. She feels like train tracks. She feels like frozen yogurt. She feels like destroying a piano. She feels like rooftops. She feels like fleeing from cops. She feels like stitches. She feels like strobe lights. She feels like blue carnival bears. She feels like curbs at 2 am. She feels like Cupid's Chokehold. She feels like running through Chicago. She feels like 1.2 million dollars. She feels like floors. She feels like everything he's ever wanted in life. […] “I love you more than I planned.

Look, life is stressful. This is true everywhere. But life in Night Vale is more stressful. There are things lurking in the shadows. Not the projections of a worried mind, but literal Things, lurking, literally, in shadows. Conspiracies are hidden in every storefront, under every street, and floating in helicopters above. And with all that there is still the bland tragedy of life. Births, deaths, comings, goings, the gulf of subjectivity and bravado between us and everyone we care about. All is sorrow, as a man once said without really doing much about it.

The calcium in your bones came from a star. We are all made from recycled bits and pieces of the universe. This matters because origins matter. For example, if you were born to a reigning monarch but kidnapped by the black market baby underground shortly after birth and sent to America where you were raised by common, unremarkable people from Ohio, and when you were in your thirties working as a humble UPS driver, dignitaries landed their helicopter on the roof of your crummy apartment building and informed you of their thirty-plus year search for you, His Royal Highness, the course of your life might change. You know? Our familial genetic origins -medical histories- inform us of medical conditions which exist in our families and when we know about these specific conditions, we can sometimes take certain actions to prevent them. Which is why I think it’s important to consider that billions of years before we were students and mothers and dog trainers and priests, we were particles that would form into star after star after star until forever passed, and instead of a star what formed was life; simplistic, crude, miraculous. And after another infinity, there we were. And this is why for you, anything is possible. Because you are made out of everything.

Alex's T-shirt is red, and for a second I think it's a trick of the light, but then I realise he's drenched, soaked in blood: blood seeping across his chest, like the stain seeping up the sky, bringing another day to the world. Behind him is that insect army of men, all running toward him at once, guns drawn. The guards are coming too, reaching for him from both sides.....The helicopter has him fixed in it's spotlight. He is standing white and still and frozen in its beam, and I don't think I have ever, in my life, seen anything more beautiful than him.

I’m sorry, Percy. I didn’t mean to . . . I always mess things up.” It was kind of hard to argue with her, though I was glad she was safe. I looked in the direction Annabeth had gone, but she’d disappeared into the crowd. I couldn’t believe what she’d just done—saved Rachel’s life, landed a helicopter, and walked away like it was no big deal.

Two birds, one metal and one feather, one gas and one blood, flew together for a time as the smoke rose and the heat grew. Maybe the bird felt safer knowing the helicopter was there. Maybe those clinging to their seat belts in the helicopter felt safer knowing the bird was. What a beautiful thing this life is, no matter the fire that burns around us.

Take time to reflect, let ideas flow on their own schedule and let yourself have numerous bad ideas to inspire the good ones.

The attempt to prevent our kids from struggling for fear it might scar their permanent records is, instead, scarring them for life.

Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically positive expectations: Be happier. Be healthier. Be the best, better than the rest. Be smarter, faster, richer, sexier, more popular, more productive, more envied, and more admired. Be perfect and amazing and crap out twelve-karat-gold nuggets before breakfast each morning while kissing your selfie-ready spouse and two and a half kids goodbye. Then fly your helicopter to your wonderfully fulfilling job, where you spend your days doing incredibly meaningful work that’s likely to save the planet one day.

Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically positive expectations: Be happier. Be healthier. Be the best, better than the rest. Be smarter, faster, richer, sexier, more popular, more productive, more envied, and more admired. Be perfect and amazing and crap out twelve-karat-gold nuggets before breakfast each morning while kissing your selfie-ready spouse and two and a half kids goodbye. Then fly your helicopter to your wonderfully fulfilling job, where you spend your days doing incredibly meaningful work that’s likely to save the planet one day. But when you stop and really think about it, conventional life advice—all the positive and happy self-help stuff we hear all the time—is actually fixating on what you lack.

10 ways to raise a wild child. Not everyone wants to raise wild, free thinking children. But for those of you who do, here's my tips: 1. Create safe space for them to be outside for a least an hour a day. Preferable barefoot & muddy. 2. Provide them with toys made of natural materials. Silks, wood, wool, etc...Toys that encourage them to use their imagination. If you're looking for ideas, Google: 'Waldorf Toys'. Avoid noisy plastic toys. Yea, maybe they'll learn their alphabet from the talking toys, but at the expense of their own unique thoughts. Plastic toys that talk and iPads in cribs should be illegal. Seriously! 3. Limit screen time. If you think you can manage video game time and your kids will be the rare ones that don't get addicted, then go for it. I'm not that good so we just avoid them completely. There's no cable in our house and no video games. The result is that my kids like being outside cause it's boring inside...hah! Best plan ever! No kid is going to remember that great day of video games or TV. Send them outside! 4. Feed them foods that support life. Fluoride free water, GMO free organic foods, snacks free of harsh preservatives and refined sugars. Good oils that support healthy brain development. Eat to live! 5. Don't helicopter parent. Stay connected and tuned into their needs and safety, but don't hover. Kids like adults need space to roam and explore without the constant voice of an adult telling them what to do. Give them freedom! 6. Read to them. Kids don't do what they are told, they do what they see. If you're on your phone all the time, they will likely be doing the same thing some day. If you're reading, writing and creating your art (painting, cooking...whatever your art is) they will likely want to join you. It's like Emilie Buchwald said, "Children become readers in the laps of their parents (or guardians)." - it's so true! 7. Let them speak their truth. Don't assume that because they are young that you know more than them. They were born into a different time than you. Give them room to respectfully speak their mind and not feel like you're going to attack them. You'll be surprised what you might learn. 8. Freedom to learn. I realize that not everyone can homeschool, but damn, if you can, do it! Our current schools system is far from the best ever. Our kids deserve better. We simply can't expect our children to all learn the same things in the same way. Not every kid is the same. The current system does not support the unique gifts of our children. How can they with so many kids in one classroom. It's no fault of the teachers, they are doing the best they can. Too many kids and not enough parent involvement. If you send your kids to school and expect they are getting all they need, you are sadly mistaken. Don't let the public school system raise your kids, it's not their job, it's yours! 9. Skip the fear based parenting tactics. It may work short term. But the long term results will be devastating to the child's ability to be open and truthful with you. Children need guidance, but scaring them into listening is just lazy. Find new ways to get through to your kids. Be creative! 10. There's no perfect way to be a parent, but there's a million ways to be a good one. Just because every other parent is doing it, doesn't mean it's right for you and your child. Don't let other people's opinions and judgments influence how you're going to treat your kid. Be brave enough to question everything until you find what works for you. Don't be lazy! Fight your urge to be passive about the things that matter. Don't give up on your kid. This is the most important work you'll ever do. Give it everything you have.

The behaviour of the English people I had run into was making it very difficult to nail down a theory that the reason my trip so far had been such a bizarre success, was that Irish people were crazy. One Englishman had spent a morning on the telephone trying to organise a helicopter to take me out to an island, when a boat was leaving only a few yards away, and here was another, making a two-hour round trip for no reason other than to lend a helping hand. Two of the more eccentric pieces of behaviour hadn't been performed by the Irish, but by my fellow countrymen. However, both Andy and Tony had embraced wholeheartedly a love of the Irish way of living life.

Dr. Talbon was struck by another very important thing. It all hung together. The stories Cheryl told — even though it was upsetting to think people could do stuff like that — they were not disjointed They were not repetitive in terms of "I've heard this before". It was not just she'd someone trying consciously or unconsciously to get attention. really processed them out and was done with them. She didn't come up with them again [after telling the story once and dealing with it]. Once it was done, it was done. And I think that was probably the biggest factor for me in her believability. I got no sense that she was using these stories to make herself a really interesting person to me so I'd really want to work with her, or something. Or that she was just living in this stuff like it was her life. Once she dealt with it and processed it, it was gone. We just went on to other things. 'Throughout the whole thing, emotionally Cheryl was getting her life together. Parts of her were integrating where she could say,"I have a sense that some particular alter has folded in with some basic alter", and she didn't bring it up again. She didn't say that this alter has reappeared to cause more problems. That just didn't happen. The therapist had learned from training and experience that when real integration occurs, it is permanent and the patient moves on.

While dragging herself up she had to hang onto the rail. Her twisted progress was that of a cripple. Once on the open deck she felt the solid impact of the black night, and the mobility of the accidental home she was about to leave. Although Lucette had never died before—no, dived before, Violet—from such a height, in such a disorder of shadows and snaking reflections, she went with hardly a splash through the wave that humped to welcome her. That perfect end was spoiled by her instinctively surfacing in an immediate sweep — instead of surrendering under water to her drugged lassitude as she had planned to do on her last night ashore if it ever did come to this. The silly girl had not rehearsed the technique of suicide as, say, free-fall parachutists do every day in the element of another chapter. Owing to the tumultuous swell and her not being sure which way to peer through the spray and the darkness and her own tentaclinging hair—t,a,c,l—she could not make out the lights of the liner, an easily imagined many-eyed bulk mightily receding in heartless triumph. Now I’ve lost my next note. Got it. The sky was also heartless and dark, and her body, her head,and particularly those damned thirsty trousers, felt clogged with Oceanus Nox, n,o,x. At every slap and splash of cold wild salt, she heaved with anise-flavored nausea and there was an increasing number, okay, or numbness, in her neck and arms. As she began losing track of herself, she thought it proper to inform a series of receding Lucettes—telling them to pass it on and on in a trick-crystal regression—that what death amounted to was only a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude. She did not see her whole life flash before her as we all were afraid she might have done; the red rubber of a favorite doll remained safely decomposed among the myosotes of an un-analyzable brook; but she did see a few odds and ends as she swam like a dilettante Tobakoff in a circle of brief panic and merciful torpor. She saw a pair of new vairfurred bedroom slippers, which Brigitte had forgotten to pack; she saw Van wiping his mouth before answering, and then, still withholding the answer, throwing his napkin on the table as they both got up; and she saw a girl with long black hair quickly bend in passing to clap her hands over a dackel in a half-tom wreath. A brilliantly illumined motorboat was launched from the not-too-distant ship with Van and the swimming coach and the oilskin-hooded Toby among the would-be saviors; but by that time a lot of sea had rolled by and Lucette was too tired to wait. Then the night was filled with the rattle of an old but still strong helicopter. Its diligent beam could spot only the dark head of Van, who, having been propelled out of the boat when it shied from its own sudden shadow, kept bobbing and bawling the drowned girl’s name in the black, foam-veined, complicated waters.

Both kinds of parenting, finally, are forms of overidentification. The helicopter parent turns the child into an instrument of her will. The overindulgent parent projects his own need for limitless freedom and security. In either case, the child is made to function as an extension of somebody else.

She feels like the first drags of fresh cigarettes but last crunches of cherry suckers. She feels like final coats of nail polish. She feels like lines of coke. She feels like knuckles you crack after a long day. She feels like Miami rain. She feels like empty football fields. She feels like full stadiums. She feels like absinthe. She feels like dangling from a helicopter. She feels like classical music. She feels like standing on a motorcycle. She feels like train tracks. She feels like frozen yogurt. She feels like destroying a piano. She feels like rooftops. She feels like fleeing from cops. She feels like stitches. She feels like strobe lights. She feels like blue carnival bears. She feels like curbs at 2 am. She feels like Cupid's Chokehold. She feels like running through Chicago. She feels like 1.2 million dollars. She feels like floors. She feels like everything he's ever wanted in life. […] “I love you more than I planned.

Be perfect and amazing and crap out twelve-karat-gold nuggets before breakfast each morning while kissing your selfie-ready spouse and two and a half kids goodbye. Then fly your helicopter to your wonderfully fulfilling job, where you spend your days doing incredibly meaningful work that’s likely to save the planet one day.

I'm burning a way of life, just like that way of life is being burned clean of Earth right now. Forgive me if I talk like a politician. I am, after all, a former state governor, and I was honest and they hated me for it. Life on Earth never settled down to doing anything very good. Science ran too far ahead of us too quickly, and the people got lost in a mechanical wilderness like children making over pretty things, gadgets, helicopters, rockets; emphasizing the wrong items, emphasizing machines instead of how to run the machines. Wars got bigger and bigger and finally killed Earth. That's what the silent radio means. That's what we ran away from.

Being in touch with your strengths and weaknesses, as well as what motivates you, will help you be more successful in your job.

Only through becoming aware of yourself and your limitations can you be transparent with others.

If you're in the middle of the ocean with no flippers and no life preserver and you hear a helicopter, this is music.

Generation X women, who as children lacked cell phones and helicopter parents, came up relying on our own wits. To keep ourselves safe, we took control. We worked hard and made lists and tried to do everything all at once for a very long time without much help. We took responsibility for ourselves--and later we also took responsibility for our work or partners or children or parents. We should be proud of ourselves.

What kind of soldier are you that you’re going to just sit in a cell while the world is thrown into chaos? Do you not understand what could happen if those weapons fall into the wrong hands? How could you be so selfish? (Syd) I’m selfish? Look, Agent Westbrook, your daddy’s a Boston stockbroker. I’m a death broker. I’m sure you don’t lecture Daddy on finance, so don’t even try to lecture me on assassination politics. I know all about them. Some bureaucratic ass-wipe sitting in a pristine office that’s totally isolated from the rest of the world decides the son of King Oomp-Loomp is a threat. He then hands down orders to people like me to go off King Oomp-Loompa’s son. Like an idiot, I do what he says without question. I hunt my target down, using information that is mostly bullshit and unreliable, gathered by someone like you who assured me it was correct as the time. But hey, if it changes minute by minute, and God forbid we pass that along to you. So me and my spotter lie in the grass, sand, or snow for days on end, cramped and hungry, never able to move more than a millimeter an hour until I have that one perfect shot I’ve been waiting for days. I take it, and then we lie there like pieces of dirt until we can inch our way back to safety, where hopefully the helicopter team will remember that they were supposed to retrieve us. Have you any idea of the nerves it takes to do what I do? To lie there on the ground while other armed men search for you? Have them step on you and not be able to even breathe or wince because if you do, it’s not only your life, but the life of your spotter? Do you know what it’s like to have the brains of your best friend spayed into your face and not be able to render aid to him because you know he’s dead and if you do, you’ll be killed too? I have been into the bowels of hell and back, Miz Westbrook. I have stared down the devil and made him sweat. So don’t tell me I don’t take this seriously. (Steele)

If you have sleep, water to drink, and decent food, you are lucky. Don’t wait for your plane to crash to realize how lucky you are. Be more grateful for life. You can wait for the helicopter, but don’t wait too long. In life there is a moment to wait and see what happens, but there is also a moment to get active. Walk out and search for your own helicopter, otherwise you will succumb. Don’t be seduced by your own ego and think you’re better than other people, because that’s the beginning of being unsuccessful.

It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another. By the standards of the early twentieth century, even a member of the Inner Party lives an austere, laborious kind of life. Nevertheless, the few luxuries that he does enjoy his large, well-appointed flat, the better texture of his clothes, the better quality of his food and drink and tobacco, his two or three servants, his private motor-car or helicopter—set him in a different world from a member of the Outer Party, and the members of the Outer Party have a similar advantage in comparison with the submerged masses whom we call ‘the proles’.

Another sister had worked at Tulane Hospital in downtown New Orleans. Tulane was also dark, hot, and surrounded by water, but officials at its parent corporation, HCA, had been proactive about arranging for private helicopters and buses to rescue patients, employees, and their families, betting correctly that government assets would prove insufficient. The process of an orderly if slow evacuation had kept panic at bay. She knew of no patients who had died at Tulane. This sister was able to laugh and joke about her experiences.

Later, I interviewed a prominent psychoanalyst, who told me that trauma destroys the fabric of time. In normal time, you move from one moment to the next, sunrise to sunset, birth to death. After trauma, you may move in circles, find yourself being sucked backwards into an eddy, or bouncing about like a rubber ball from now to then and back again. August is June, June is December. What time is it? Guess again. In the traumatic universe, the basic laws of matter are suspended: ceiling fans can be helicopters, car exhaust can be mustard gas. Another odd feature of traumatic time is that it doesn’t just destroy the flow of the present into the future, it corrodes everything that came before, eating at moments and people from your previous life, until you can’t remember why any of them mattered. What I previously found inconceivable is now inescapable: I have been blown up so many times in my mind that it is impossible to imagine a version of myself that has not been blown up. The man on the other side of the soldier’s question is not me. In fact, he never existed. The war is gone now, but the event remains, the happening that nearly erased the life to come and thus erased the life that came before. The soldier’s question hangs in the air the way it always has. The way it always will.   Have you ever been blown up before, sir?

hope I didn’t cause any awkwardness 60when I mentioned the incident with the soldier, or the checkpoint, or when I reveal that we are living under occupation here. Gunshots and military vehicle sirens, and sometimes the sound of helicopters, warplanes and shelling, the subsequent wail of ambulances; not only do these noises precede breaking news reports, but now they have to compete with the dog’s barking, too. And the situation has been like this for such a long time that there aren’t many people alive today who remember little details about what life was like before all this,

I’m all about safety, but kids need some risk in their lives to stimulate their minds, hone their individuality, and encourage their creativity. The era of helicopter parenting has gone too far. I let mine take a few bumps and knocks, free-range, and learn a little bit about risk from a young age.

Dear Bill, I came to this black wall again, to see and touch your name. William R. Stocks. And as I do, I wonder if anyone ever stops to realize that next to your name, on this black wall, is your mother's heart. A heart broken fifteen years ago today, when you lost your life in Vietnam. And as I look at your name, I think of how many, many times I used to wonder how scared and homesick you must have been, in that strange country called Vietnam. And if and how it might have changed you, for you were the most happy-go-lucky kid in the world, hardly ever sad or unhappy. And until the day I die, I will see you as you laughed at me, even when I was very mad at you. And the next thing I knew, we were laughing together. But on this past New Year's Day, I talked by phone to a friend of yours from Michigan, who spent your last Christmas and the last four months of your life with you. Jim told me how you died, for he was there and saw the helicopter crash. He told me how your jobs were like sitting ducks; they would send you men out to draw the enemy into the open, and then, they would send in the big guns and planes to take over. He told me how after a while over there, instead of a yellow streak, the men got a mean streak down their backs. Each day the streak got bigger, and the men became meaner. Everyone but you, Bill. He said how you stayed the same happy-go-lucky guy that you were when you arrived in Vietnam. And he said how you, of all people, should never have been the one to die. How lucky you were to have him for a friend. And how lucky he was to have had you. They tell me the letters I write to you and leave here at this memorial are waking others up to the fact that there is still much pain left from the Vietnam War. But this I know; I would rather to have had you for twenty-one years and all the pain that goes with losing you, than never to have had you at all. -Mom

Gap years should be the norm, not the exception. An increasingly ugly secret of campus life is that a mix of helicopter parenting and social media has rendered many 18-year-olds unfit for college. Ninety percent of kids who defer and take a gap year return to college and are more likely to graduate, with better grades.

As I sat next to him on the piano bench, I said, “What if I’d never walked into the music store . . .” Sam smiled gently and looked at me as he played the keys on the piano ever so softly. And then he said, “But you did.” I decided that was my answer to questions of fate. I could go around asking myself what if x hadn’t happened, and the answer would always be, “But it did.” What if Jesse hadn’t gotten on that helicopter? But he did. I decided to no longer wonder what would have happened if things had worked out differently. And instead, I would focus on what was in front of me. I would focus on reality instead of asking myself questions about fictions.

I prayed. I flattened myself under her bed and prayed. My mother sat up, rigid, trembling. The machines flew overhead then away and back again, the sound retreating and filling my head once more. I lay next to my mother, wondering about the fate of my brothers, my sisters ans stepsisters, my father and friends. I knew that when the helicopters were gone, life would have changed irreversibly in our village. But would it be over? Would the crickets leave? I did not know. My mother did not know. It was the beginning of the end if knowing that life would continue. Do you have a feeling, Michael, that you will wake up tomorrow? That you will eat tomorrow? That the world will not end tomorrow?

The engineer raised the litter, and we used the tagline to prevent the rotor wash from twirling it like a top. The litter reached the helicopter door and the engineer dragged it into the chopper. Noxious fluids leaked from the body bag, blown into sticky mist by the rotors. Sickened by the powerful smell, the flight engineer leaned out the door and vomited a stream into the downwash.

I have no problem with being fabulous. My problem comes when you won't allow yourself to be an ordinary woman with a decent apartment and an okay job. When only the mom is allowed to be boring—because her life is so rich with meaning. When I carefully choreographed the story of how amazing I was, I was acting like one of those helicopter parents—you know, the ones who refuse to admit that their Jackson might suck at math or Stella might not be the world's greatest violinist. 'You are special! You are special!' they cry to their children, hoping this will boost their confidence. But the real message is one of panic: You must be special. Ordinary is not okay. When I walked into a party projecting the Shiny Girl—she of the lighthearted flings and glitzy job—I was essentially doing the same thing.

Auto rotation is practiced over and over when learning to fly helicopters. It is the prime life-saving maneuver, and it is an enormous amount of fun to do. To accomplish a perfect auto rotation, landing like a feather and right on the mark, is another pure joy of flying. So if you lose your only engine while flying, hope you are in a helicopter rather than an airplane. Your odds of a safe landing are infinitely greater.

The Everglades are on fire on my final drive down to the Keys. On the curve of the turnpike where the pineapple groves end and marshland begins, I watch the green horizon burn with helicopters bobbing overhead, fighting the flames. It's too late in the season to be a wildfire. The radio says some thrill-torcher is responsible. I don't believe in omens. I believe we choose our own signs, so I take this one as my own: with this blaze, I leave my old life up here on the mainland in ashes.

The first responders casually walk towards the helicopter, perhaps thinking this is merely a training exercise. Sergeant Funches leaps from the aircraft covered in blood, frantically waving his arms like a madman. The responders belatedly realize this is a real emergency and begin sprinting to the helicopter. Funches barely has time to stop an overzealous fireman running towards the rear of the helicopter. The fireman holds a litter vertically in the air and nearly runs into the spinning tail rotor.

Cynthia Dusel-Bacon, by all accounts a rugged thirty-one-year-old geologist, was conducting a land survey in the Alaskan bush in 1977 when she saw an aggressive black bear beelining toward her. Dusel-Bacon waved her arms and shouted, right up until the moment the bear knocked her down, after which she decided to play dead so the bear wouldn’t see her as a threat. That was a consequential error in judgment, experts said afterward, because the 170-pound bear likely never saw her as a threat. It was just hungry. When she stopped resisting, it dragged her into the trees and began to eat her alive. Even as some parts of her body disappeared down the throat of the bear, other parts of her body, quite heroically, accessed a communication device and alerted a partner in the area as to her emergency. Other geologists arrived in a helicopter and scared the bear off in time to save her life. The never-say-die Dusel-Bacon went on to post instructional YouTube videos in which she demonstrates how to chop carrots, wash dishes, and get dressed with two prosthetic arms.

I took off my boot and sock and examined my ankle, expecting—and indeed, in that perverse manner of the injured male, rather hoping—to find some splintered bone straining at the skin like a tent pole, making everyone who saw it queasy. But the ankle was just faintly bluish and tender and very slightly swollen, and I realized that once more in my life I had merely achieved acute pain and not the sort of grotesque injury that would lead to a mercy flight by helicopter and a fussing-over by young nurses in erotically starched uniforms.

Many people considered that no helicopter with real control characteristics could ever be constructed. Other pessimists said that even if you did build a helicopter, no one would need it.” However, the success of Focke and Breguet were silent sirens for the evolution of the helicopter and its future. It was a “wonderful chance to relive one’s own life all over again,” Sikorsky said. “To design a new type of flying machine without knowing how to design it; then build it without really knowing how to build it and then try to test-fly it without ever having flown a helicopter before.

The biologist and intellectual E. O. Wilson was once asked what represented the most hindrance to the development of children; his answer was the soccer mom [helicopter parent]….They try to eliminate the trial and error from children's lives and transform them into nerds working on preexisting (parent-compatible) maps of reality. They are good students, but nerds--that is, they are like computers, except slower. Further, they are totally untrained to handle ambiguity….Provided we have the right type of rigor, we need randomness, mess, adventures, uncertainty, self-discovery, near-traumatic episodes, all those things that make life worth living.

Dotcom believes one of the reasons he was targeted was his support for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. He says he was compelled to reach out to the site after US soldier Bradley Manning leaked documents to it. The infamous video recording of the Apache gunship gunning down a group of Iraqis (some of whom, despite widespread belief to the contrary, were later revealed to have been armed), including two Reuters journalists, was the trigger. “Wow, this is really crazy,” Dotcom recalls thinking, watching the black-and-white footage and hearing the operators of the helicopter chat about firing on the group. He made a €20,000 donation to Wikileaks through Megaupload’s UK account. “That was one of the largest donations they got,” he says. According to Dotcom, the US, at the time, was monitoring Wikileaks and trying better to understand its support base. “My name must have popped right up.” The combination of a leaking culture and a website dedicated to producing leaked material would horrify the US government, he says. A willing leaker and a platform on which to do it was “their biggest enemy and their biggest fear . . . If you are in a corrupt government and you know how much fishy stuff is going on in the background, to you, that is the biggest threat — to have a site where people can anonymously submit documents.” Neil MacBride was appointed to the Wikileaks case, meaning Dotcom shares prosecutors with Assange. “I think the Wikileaks connection got me on the radar.” Dotcom believes the US was most scared of the threat of inspiration Wikileaks posed. He also believes it shows just how many secrets the US has hidden from the public and the rest of the world. “That’s why they are going after that so hard. Only a full transparent government will have no corruption and no back door deals or secret organisations or secret agreements. The US is the complete opposite of that. It is really difficult to get any information in the US, so whistleblowing is the one way you can get to information and provide information to the public.

My huge generalities touched on millennials’ oversensitivity, their sense of entitlement, their insistence that they were always right despite sometimes overwhelming proof to the contrary, their failure to consider anything within its context, their joint tendencies of overreaction and passive-aggressive positivity—incidentally, all of these misdemeanors happening only sometimes, not always, and possibly exacerbated by the meds many this age had been fed since childhood by overprotective, helicopter moms and dads mapping their every move. These parents, whether tail-end baby boomers or Gen Xers, now seemed to be rebelling against their own rebelliousness because they felt they’d never really been loved by their own selfish narcissistic true-boomer parents, and who as a result were smothering their kids and not teaching them how to deal with life’s hardships about how things actually work: people might not like you, this person will not love you back, kids are really cruel, work sucks, it’s hard to be good at something, your days will be made up of failure and disappointment, you’re not talented, people suffer, people grow old, people die. And the response from Generation Wuss was to collapse into sentimentality and create victim narratives, instead of grappling with the cold realities by struggling and processing them and then moving on, better prepared to navigate an often hostile or indifferent world that doesn’t care if you exist.

Rob thinks that a bullet has punctured the aircraft’s hydraulic system. PJs have a name for the red-colored hydraulic fluid: helicopter blood, and it is crucial to the aircraft’s flight-control systems. Without hydraulic fluid the pilots cannot control the helicopter. The reason for Rob’s alarm is that hot, red fluid seems to be spraying onto his arm and leg from somewhere behind him. He reaches up to locate the source and feels his face hanging down from his skull. He is stunned to realize that what he thought was hydraulic fluid spraying under pressure is really his own blood. His face is splayed open from his eye to his ear. The bullet exited from the back of his neck only a quarter of an inch from his spine. He feels the back of his neck and his fingers find the bloody exit hole.

What is the future of men who have lost sight of the past? Earl Hollsopple lived on the edge of civilization in a deserted shack for nearly forty years. His life was one beautiful night of stargazing after another, until a helicopter flies overhead, and exposing his meager world. It is a sign; it is time for him to return to civilization. Unknowingly, Earl’s journey parallels another he had deeply repressed, and that is his return from the Vietnam War. The lone survivor of a plane crash, Earl waits for rescue that never came. He is left to find his way home alone. On both his quests, old Earl and young Earl learn lessons of survival, overcoming isolation and handling conflicts; his travels teach him not just about himself, but humankind. Reaching pivotal points in both journeys, Earl meets fateful loves, leading to destinies that are ultimately intertwined. Everything in life circles until we are able to answer the riddles that plaque man and humanity. Only until we take the journey, solve the problems of our own existence, do we find our way home.

In the nineteen sixties and early seventies students wore buttons and headbands demanding equal rights for women, blacks, Native Americans and all oppressed minorities, an end to the war in Vietnam, the salvation of the rain forests and the planet in general. [...] College students boycotted class, taught in, rioted everywhere, dodged the draft, fled to Canada or Scandinavia. High school students came to school fresh from images of war on television news, men blown to bits in rice paddies, helicopters hovering, tentative soldiers of the Viet Cong blasted out of their tunnels, their hands behind their heads, lucky for the moment they weren’t blasted back in again, images of anger back home, marches, demonstrations, hell no we won’t go, sit-ins, teachins, students falling before the guns of the National Guard, blacks recoiling from Bull Connor’s dogs, burn baby burn, black is beautiful, trust no one over thirty, I have a dream and, at the end of it all, your President is not a crook. [...]Mechanics and plumbers had to fight while college students shook indignant fists, fornicated in the fields of Woodstock and sat in.

While he’s examining them he glances over at Sergeant Disney who is lying on the deck with his feet propped-up on a bench. Then, Rob struggles to his feet and immediately lies back down—over and over again. What is happening is that he feels better with his feet propped up on the bench, higher than his heart. Gravity helps force the life-giving fluids into his body’s core and brain. The IV fluids along with his elevated feet counteract the shock brought on by his blood loss. As soon as he starts to feel better his instinct to help others kicks in and he tries to get up and assist his wounded friends. But as soon as he gets up, blood drains away from his brain, the shock returns, the world begins to spin and he nearly passes out. Sergeant Disney’s instinct for self-preservation reasserts itself and he quickly lies down and puts his feet back up on the bench. Soon he begins to feel better, and once again rises, only to be forced back down by dizziness. Funches yells at Disney to stay down, but Rob’s up and down antics continue until Ross returns to his side. As the helicopter speeds through the air, Disney briefly passes out. When Sergeant Funches glances over to check on him, his eyes are closed and he appears to be dead. Sergeant Funches goes ballistic and immediately screams at Disney. Sergeant Disney is abruptly startled awake.

The great German philosopher Schopenhauer, in a magnificent essay on “The Foundation of Morality,” treats of this transcendental spiritual experience. How is it, he asks, that an individual can so forget himself and his own safety that he will put himself and his life in jeopardy to save another from death or pain—as though that other’s life were his own, that other’s danger his own? Such a one is then acting, Schopenhauer answers, out of an instinctive recognition of the truth that he and that other in fact are one. He has been moved not from the lesser, secondary knowledge of himself as separate from others, but from an immediate experience of the greater, truer truth, that we are all one in the ground of our being. Schopenhauer’s name for this motivation is “compassion,” Mitleid, and he identifies it as the one and only inspiration of inherently moral action. It is founded, in his view, in a metaphysically valid insight. For a moment one is selfless, boundless, without ego.3 And I have lately had occasion to think frequently of this word of Schopenhauer as I have watched on television newscasts those heroic helicopter rescues, under fire in Vietnam, of young men wounded in enemy territory: their fellows, forgetful of their own safety, putting their young lives in peril as though the lives to be rescued were their own. There, I would say—if we are looking truly for an example in our day—is an authentic rendition of the labor of Love.

More helicopters hovered to the south, and a large troop carrier lifted off the ground a mile ahead. These weren’t the same helicopters Rick had left behind in Tennessee. These were new ones from North Carolina. They must have had a plan, but Rick wasn’t in any hurry to run to his doom. He slowed down to seventy miles per hour and looked at Renee. “I love you, too,” he said. Renee’s heart lurched into her throat. The reserved look on his face was something she wasn’t used to seeing. “Do you think this is it?” “I don’t know.” He looked again at the fuel gauge. She put her hand over the gauge, covering it from his view. “Do you remember what you told me once?” Rick smiled. “That, sometimes, it’s best not to know.” “Just don’t quit on me. Don’t make this a worthless gesture.” Renee forced him to look at her. Rick feared running out of fuel in the middle of these mountains. He feared the fury of the Firebird’s losing power, rolling to a stop, becoming helpless, and giving all these patrolmen a chance to catch up to them and gun them down like Bonnie and Clyde. Surely, they would use lethal force and nothing else. But as long as that engine ran and Rick was behind the wheel, they had a chance to live. And every second of life mattered. “OK, just hang on,” he said, meeting her gaze. He reached over and kissed her gently. Renee relished the kiss, closing her eyes and then opening them wide to take in the mountains. Did it hurt, getting shot? She wondered if she’d know when the last drop of blood flowed out of her body. What would happen to Rick? Would he be with her? Would they know each other without bodies? The mountains sure were beautiful.

Thanks again, sir.” Jules shook his hand again. “You’re welcome again,” the captain said, his smile warm. “I’ll be back aboard the ship myself at around nineteen hundred. If it’s okay with you, I’ll, uh, stop in, see how you’re doing.” Son of a bitch. Was Jules getting hit on? Max looked at Webster again. He looked like a Marine. Muscles, meticulous uniform, well-groomed hair. That didn’t make him gay. And he’d smiled warmly at Max, too. The man was friendly, personable. And yet . . . Jules was flustered. “Thanks,” he said. “That would be . . . That’d be nice. Would you excuse me, though, for a sec? I’ve got to speak to Max, before I, uh . . . But I’ll head over to the ship right away.” Webster shook Max’s hand. “It was an honor meeting you, sir.” He smiled again at Jules. Okay, he hadn’t smiled at Max like that. Max waited until the captain and the medic both were out of earshot. “Is he—” “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Jules said. “But, oh my God.” “He seems nice,” Max said. “Yes,” Jules said. “Yes, he does.” “So. The White House?” “Yeah. About that . . .” Jules took a deep breath. “I need to let you know that you might be getting a call from President Bryant.” “Might be,” Max repeated. “Yes,” Jules said. “In a very definite way.” He spoke quickly, trying to run his words together: “I had a very interesting conversation with him in which I kind of let slip that you’d resigned again and he was unhappy about that so I told him I might be able to persuade you to come back to work if he’d order three choppers filled with Marines to Meda Island as soon as possible.” “You called the President of the United States,” Max said. “During a time of international crisis, and basically blackmailed him into sending Marines.” Jules thought about that. “Yeah. Yup. Although it was a pretty weird phone call, because I was talking via radio to some grunt in the CIA office. I had him put the call to the President for me, and we did this kind of relay thing.” “You called the President,” Max repeated. “And you got through . . .?” “Yeah, see, I had your cell phone. I’d accidently switched them, and . . . The President’s direct line was in your address book, so . . .” Max nodded. “Okay,” he said. “That’s it?” Jules said. “Just, okay, you’ll come back? Can I call Alan to tell him? We’re on a first-name basis now, me and the Pres.” “No,” Max said. “There’s more. When you call your pal Alan, tell him I’m interested, but I’m looking to make a deal for a former Special Forces NCO.” “Grady Morant,” Jules said. “He’s got info on Heru Nusantra that the president will find interesting. In return, we want a full pardon and a new identity.” Jules nodded. “I think I could set that up.” He started for the helicopter, but then turned back. “What’s Webster’s first name? Do you know?” “Ben,” Max told him. “Have a nice vacation.” “Recovering from a gunshot wound is not a vacation. You need to write that, like, on your hand or something. Jeez.” Max laughed. “Hey, Jules?” He turned back again. “Yes, sir?” “Thanks for being such a good friend.” Jules’s smile was beautiful. “You’re welcome, Max.” But that smile faded far too quickly. “Uh-oh, heads up—crying girlfriend on your six.” Ah, God, no . . . Max turned to see Gina, running toward him. Please God, let those be tears of joy. “What’s the verdict?” he asked her. Gina said the word he’d been praying for. “Benign.” Max took her in his arms, this woman who was the love of his life, and kissed her. Right in front of the Marines.

Rebel [Verse 1] I don't give a fuck my brudda, I never have I'm straight from the gutter my brudda, we never had We living on a budget - holes in the rooftop Room full of buckets, it's getting bad Things could be worse I suppose, school trips, school kids Cursing my clothes, is it the same in every house When the curtains are closed? (daydreamin') I'm in a world of my own (I ain't leavin') It must be because I hate my reality That's why I'm on the verge of embracing insanity Put me in a padded room Throw away the key and let me escape the anarchy I can't take it, I turn my back on the world I can't face it, Ray-Ban gang fam Can't see my eyes cause I'm on my dark shades shit (Ray Charles) [Bridge] Black everything, you can ask David Cameron if we're living in the dark ages Black everything, you can ask David Black everything, you can ask David Black everything, you can ask David Cameron if we're living in the dark ages [Hook] (It's a living hell) I'm a rebel Always have been Where I'm come from it's a mad ting (It's a living hell) Standing in my Stan Smiths Stamping on the canvas for action (It's a living hell) All I acquired from the riot Is people are sick and tired of being quiet (It's a living hell) Dying to be heard That's why there's fire in my words [Verse 2] I don't give a fuck my brudda, I never will Straight from the gutter my brudda, rare real We been living life like "fuck it", living life like there's nothing To live for but the money, I'mma keep it 100 The hunger inside is what drives us That's why there's youngers inside who are lifers They say love is blind so you might just Fall in love with them crimes that'll blind us And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't out late Around H, scales out, another ounce weighed More pounds made, sounds great Salts under my tongue, my mouth's laced So many feds chasing me down, the ground shakes Helicopters, bikes and cars chasing So many officers behind, my heart's racing [Bridge] [Hook x2]

We then reached a fork in the valley. Should we go left or right? Dad called it left. I had a very powerful intuition that right was the choice we should make. Dad insisted left. I insisted right. It was a fifty-fifty call and he relented. Within two hundred yards we stumbled across a snowy track through the woods and followed it excitedly. Within a mile it came out on a mountain road, and within ten minutes we had flagged down a lift from a car heading up the hill in the darkness. We had found salvation, and I was beat. The car dropped us off at the gates of the garrison thirty minutes later. It was, by then, late into the night, but I was suddenly buzzing with energy and excitement. The fatigue had gone. Dad knew that I had made the right call up there--if we had chosen left we would still be trudging into the unknown. I felt so proud. In truth it was probably luck, but I learned another valuable lesson that night: Listen to the quiet voice inside. Intuition is the noise of the mind. As we tromped back through the barracks, though, we noticed there was an unusual amount of activity for the early hours of a weekday morning. It soon became very clear why. First a sergeant appeared, followed by another soldier, and then we were ushered into the senior officers’ block. There was my uncle, standing in uniform looking both tired and serious. I started to break out into a big smile. So did Dad. Well, I was excited. We had cheated a slow, lingering hypothermic death, lost together in the mountains. We were alive. Our enthusiasm was countered by the immortal words from my uncle, the brigadier, saying: “I wouldn’t smile if I was you…” He continued, “The entire army mountain rescue team is currently out scouring the mountains for you, on foot and in the air with the search-and-rescue helicopter. I hope you have a good explanation.” We didn’t, of course, save that we had been careless, and we had got lucky; but that’s life sometimes. And the phrase: “I wouldn’t smile if I was you,” has gone down into Grylls family folklore.

The first time he’d cut off ears because he was there and it was being done, but that was it. He wasn’t one of those who once they were in all that lawlessness couldn’t wait to get going, the ones who weren’t too well put together or were pretty aggressive to start off with and only needed the slightest opportunity to go ape-shit. One guy in his unit, guy they called Big Man, he wasn’t there one or two days when he’d slashed some pregnant woman’s belly open. Farley was himself only beginning to get good at it at the end of his first tour. But the second time, in this unit where there are a lot of other guys who’d also come back and who hadn’t come back just to kill time or to make a couple extra bucks, this second time, in with these guys who are always looking to be put out in front, ape-shit guys who recognize the horror but know it is the very best moment of their lives, he is ape-shit too. In a firefight, running from danger, blasting with guns, you can’t not be frightened, but you can go berserk and get the rush, and so the second time he goes berserk. The second time he fucking wreaks havoc. Living right out there on the edge, full throttle, the excitement and the fear, and there’s nothing in civilian life that can match it. Door gunning. They’re losing helicopters and they need door gunners. They ask at some point for door gunners and he jumps at it, he volunteers. Up there above the action, and everything looks small from above, and he just guns down huge. Whatever moves. Death and destruction, that is what door gunning is all about. With the added attraction that you don’t have to be down in the jungle the whole time. But then he comes home and it’s not better than the first time, it’s worse. Not like the guys in World War II: they had the ship, they got to relax, someone took care of them, asked them how they were. There’s no transition. One day he’s door gunning in Vietnam, seeing choppers explode, in midair seeing his buddies explode, down so low he smells skin cooking, hears the cries, sees whole villages going up in flames, and the next day he’s back in the Berkshires. And now he really doesn’t belong, and, besides, he’s got fears now about things going over his head. He doesn’t want to be around other people, he can’t laugh or joke, he feels that he is no longer a part of their world, that he has seen and done things so outside what these people know about that he cannot connect to them and they cannot connect to him. They told him he could go home? How could he go home?

In a matter of sixty short minutes, that thing could whisk Neil away to civilization, I thought. Hmm. My goodness, that was a beautiful prospect. Somehow I had to get on that chopper with him. I packed in thirty seconds flat, everything from the past three months. I taped a white cross onto my sleeve, and raced out to where Neil was sat waiting. One chance. What the heck. Neil shook his head at me, smiling. “God, you push it, Bear, don’t you?” he shouted over the noise of the rotors. “You’re going to need a decent medic on the flight,” I replied, with a smile. “And I’m your man.” (There was at least some element of truth in this: I was a medic and I was his buddy--and yes, he did need help. But essentially I was trying to pull a bit of a fast one.) The pilot shouted that two people would be too heavy. “I have to accompany him at all times,” I shouted back over the engine noise. “His feet might fall off at any moment,” I added quietly. The pilot looked back at me, then at the white cross on my sleeve. He agreed to drop Neil somewhere down at a lower altitude, and then come back for me. “Perfect. Go. I’ll be here.” I shook his hand firmly. Let’s just get this done before anyone thinks too much about it, I mumbled to myself. And with that the pilot took off and disappeared from view. Mick and Henry were laughing. “If you pull this one off, Bear, I will eat my socks. You just love to push it, don’t you?” Mick said, smiling. “Yep, good try, but you aren’t going to see him again, I guarantee you,” Henry added. Thanks to the pilot’s big balls, he was wrong. The heli returned empty, I leapt aboard, and with the rotors whirring at full power to get some grip in the thin air, the bird slowly lifted into the air. The stall warning light kept buzzing away as we fought against gravity, but then the nose dipped and soon we were skimming over the rocks, away from base camp and down the glacier. I was out of there--and Mick was busy taking his socks off. As we descended, I spotted, far beneath us, this lone figure sat on a rock in the middle of a giant boulder field. Neil’s two white “beacons” shining bright. I love it. I smiled. We picked Neil up, and in an instant we were flying together through the huge Himalayan valleys like an eagle freed. Neil and I sat back in the helicopter, faces pressed against the glass, and watched our life for the past three months become a shimmer in the distance. The great mountain faded into a haze, hidden from sight. I leaned against Neil’s shoulder and closed my eyes. Everest was gone.

Knowing what environments are a good fit requires a person to know about themselves, in other words, to have self-awareness.

Understanding what is being said is only a fraction of the task of communicating. Taking in signals from the entire context is critical.

The snow in the mountains had changed everything. Frank swore as he listened on the phone to the head of search and rescue describing the conditions they'd run into on the other side of the Crazies. "The terrain is too dangerous," Jim Martin said. "Even experienced ground crews found many areas too difficult to traverse with the snow." "What about the searchers in the helicopters?" "They should be able to see tracks in the snow once the clouds life." Jim didn't sound optimistic. "The storm isn't moving on as fast as the weatherman predicted.

Leonardo da Vinci was perhaps the greatest biomimic of all time. Not only did he precisely adhere to nature's proportions in his art but also spent the last ten years of his life studying-even obsessing over-the geometry and motions of natural flow. Based on years of observing birds in flight, Leonardo, the world's first fluid dynamicist, designed flying wings, a helicopter, and numerous other machines. His understanding of how the human heart actually operates-through manipulation of whirlpools-has only been rediscovered in the past decade. Even five hundred years later, the depth of Leonardo's insights into the secrets of nature's form and function cause scientists to marvel.

A righteous man who has been pious all of his life is on the roof of his house during the mother of all floods. The water just keeps rising. A motorboat drives by and stops in front of his house. “Hop in,” says the man in the boat. The righteous man shakes his head and says, ‘Don’t worry about me. God will save me.’ A few hours later, with the water now just a few feet from his level on the roof, another boat passes. ‘Quick, jump in,’ a woman on the boat says. The righteous man smiles serenely. ‘Thanks, but the Lord will save me. I’m sure of it.’ Finally the water has reached his waist and a helicopter overhead lowers a rope ladder down to him. He ignores it and says a prayer to the Lord, whom he knows will reward a true believer.” Van Hutten paused for effect. “Five minutes later he drowns.”          The physicist seemed delighted by the confused expression on Kira’s face. “So the spirit of this righteous man floats to the pearly gates,” continued van Hutten, “and he sees God. ‘Lord,’ he says. ‘I’ve been a righteous, pious man my entire life. I’m just curious as to why you didn’t save me from the flood. I thought surely you would.’” In reply, God shakes his mighty head and says, ‘Are you kidding? I sent you two boats and a helicopter. What more do you want from me?

In my conversations and reading I often find humility seems to be a source of generational conflict. One of the difficulties older generations encounter when dealing with younger generations is the latter’s apparent lack of humility. The young have come of age in an era where it was common for their parents to not allow them to make mistakes, self-inflicted or otherwise. Because this group has never been allowed to fail, they have seldom been humbled. Failure can be the most important catalyst of humility. The helicopter parent has sacrificed the invaluable lifelong lessons of humility at the altar of building unendurable self esteem. When real life hits such poor children the results are often a stubborn inability to recognize they have failed and stunning lack of means to deal with their failure.               The first time they are humbled can be traumatic. Sometimes this results in drama between the triad of parent, player and coach with the coach expecting player humility, while the player and parent expect automatic success. In these situations it is important to eliminate anger and frustration and try to resolve the conflict. Unfortunately, and ironically, a lack of humility by any or all of these parties can get in the way of such resolution.

Compared to other generations, millennials tend to be more collaborative, are accustomed to working in teams & have a passion for pressure.

The old think the young are lazy and entitled. The young think the old are incompetent and inefficient.

Technical expertise is only a tiny portion of what it takes to be a successful employee and, particularly, a successful leader.

One thing they do not teach you in college is what you will actually be doing in a career of your choosing.

Ruefully she thought of the cigarette she’d lit only seconds before the explosion. It was still smouldering in the CIC. What a waste. She’d have given anything for a cigarette now. Just one before she died. Instinct told her that no one on the ship was likely to survive. But no, she thought suddenly. Of course. They weren’t reliant on lifeboats. They had helicopters. Relief flooded through her. Shankar had reached the top of the companionway. Hands stretched down to haul him out. As Crowe followed, it struck her that what they were experiencing might be the kind of contact humans knew best - aggressive, ruthless and murderous. Soldiers pulled her into the island. Well, Ms Alien, she thought, what do you think now about finding intelligent life in space? ‘You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?’ she asked a soldier. He stared at her. ‘You’ve got to be kidding, lady. Just get the hell out of here.

Easy!,” you think. “Gently lower the collective pitch lever and you’ll descend gracefully to the ground, a hero.” However, when you try it, you discover that life isn’t that simple. The helicopter’s nose drops, and you start to spiral down to the left. Suddenly you discover that you’re flying a system where every control input has secondary effects. Lower the left-hand lever and you need to add compensating backward movement to the right-hand stick and push the right pedal. But then each of these changes affects all of the other controls again. Suddenly you’re juggling an unbelievably complex system, where every change impacts all the other inputs. Your workload is phenomenal: your hands and feet are constantly moving, trying to balance all the interacting forces. Helicopter controls are decidedly not orthogonal.

happier. Be healthier. Be the best, better than the rest. Be smarter, faster, richer, sexier, more popular, more productive, more envied, and more admired. Be perfect and amazing and crap out twelve-karat-gold nuggets before breakfast each morning while kissing your selfie-ready spouse and two and a half kids goodbye. Then fly your helicopter to your wonderfully fulfilling job, where you spend your days doing incredibly meaningful work that’s likely to save the planet one day. But when you stop and really think about it, conventional life advice—all the positive and happy self-help stuff we hear all the time—is actually fixating on what you lack. It lasers in on what you perceive your personal shortcomings and failures to already

I can tell from the crack of a rifle shot the type of weapon fired and what direction the bullet is traveling. I can listen to a mortar pop and know its size, how far away it is. I know instinctively when I should prep a tree line with artillery before I move into it. I know which draws and fields should be crossed on line, which should be assaulted, and which are safe to cross in column. ⁣ ⁣ I know where to place my men when we stop and form a perimeter. I can shoot a rifle and throw a grenade and direct air and artillery onto any target, under any circumstances. I can dress any type of wound, I have dressed all types of wounds, watered protruding intestines with my canteen to keep them from cracking under sun bake, patched sucking chests with plastic, tied off stumps with field expedient tourniquets. ⁣ ⁣ I can call in medevac helicopters, talk them, cajole them, dare them into any zone. I do these things, experience these things, repeatedly, daily. Their terrors and miseries are so compelling, and yet so regular, that I have ascended to a high emotion that is nonetheless a crusted numbness. I am an automaton, bent on survival, agent and prisoner of my misery. How terribly exciting. And how, to what purpose, will these skills serve me when this madness ends? ⁣ ⁣ What lies on the other side of all this? It frightens me. I haven't thought about it. I haven't prepared for it. I am so good, so ready for these things that were my birthright. I do not enjoy them. I know they have warped me. But it will be so hard to deal with a life empty of them.

KRULAK and Dyer wrote the first textbook for Marine helicopter pilots and war planners. Usually doctrine and tactics are developed after a weapon is available, but Krulak believed that doctrine should drive, not follow, the development of the helicopter. He

Death, as such, held no fear for Richard. More than ever he believed in his heart that he would go to Hell and sit at the right hand of Satan. He believed all the hardest criminals throughout history would be there and he’d get to know them. Jack the Ripper, Al Capone, John Dillinger, Ted Bundy, Adolf Hitler, and all the others sent to Hell for their deeds. Heaven and Hell were as real to Richard as the helicopter now taking him to San Quentin.

She slid into the warm, scented water, wryly accepting Zulema's assistance and bending her head obediently as her hair was carefully wetted and then shampooed. Cocooned in towels, she emerged again and sat down to have her hair combed out and her nails painted. Why all the fuss? She wondered. 'You look tired, sitt. Lie down and rest for a while,' Zulema urged. 'The party will last for hours.' Party? So someone was throwing a party. Her curiosity satisfied, Bethany smiled and lay down. She could hear a helicopter.

you can only see the goal if you take a helicopter view. It’s impossible to see the goal from within the maze. And yet, that’s how most of us live. We do things conventionally because that’s “how it’s done.

Coll would be a heavenly place to be a child. There are beaches and boats, everyone knows you, it’s the kind of place you leave the door open. If you’re on the island, it’s know. If you catch the ferry to the mainland, well, that’s known about too. Should you have a mishap and require the air ambulance, a helicopter will have you in a Glasgow hospital in twenty minutes, by which time the island will have learned of your fate. A mere thirteen miles of single-track road separates ‘the unspoiled end’ from ‘God’s own country’. There are local land feuds, a limited supply of fresh water, and no high school. In effect, the children leave home when they are an unfledged eleven, to travel as boarders to the secondary school in Oban. Higher education and jobs take them yet farther afield. It seems a price to pay for an apparently idyllic island life, to lose your children so young.

On the 30th of April 1975, American helicopters flew out of Saigon in an ignominious retreat as the tanks of the People’s Liberation Army of Vietnam rumbled into the grounds of the American Embassy in Saigon.

Experiencing trauma, abuse, or bullying may all be triggers that bring on both obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. Teenagers and young adults who were raised by anxious parents may learn obsessive compulsive behaviors. Teenagers and young adults who were raised by “helicopter” parents may find it difficult to cope in the world and may develop OCD to try and cope with the stress of adult life. Prolonged exposure to stress and the resultant anxiety seems to be quite a prominent OCD trigger. A sudden accident or trauma like a car accident or accidental death of a loved

righteous man who has been pious all of his life is on the roof of his house during the mother of all floods. The water just keeps rising. A motorboat drives by and stops in front of his house. “Hop in,” says the man in the boat. The righteous man shakes his head and says, ‘Don’t worry about me. God will save me.’ A few hours later, with the water now just a few feet from his level on the roof, another boat passes. ‘Quick, jump in,’ a woman on the boat says. The righteous man smiles serenely. ‘Thanks, but the Lord will save me. I’m sure of it.’ Finally the water has reached his waist and a helicopter overhead lowers a rope ladder down to him. He ignores it and says a prayer to the Lord, whom he knows will reward a true believer.” Van Hutten paused for effect. “Five minutes later he drowns.”               The physicist seemed delighted by the confused expression on Kira’s face. “So the spirit of this righteous man floats to the pearly gates,” continued van Hutten, “and he sees God. ‘Lord,’ he says. ‘I’ve been a righteous, pious man my entire life. I’m just curious as to why you didn’t save me from the flood. I thought surely you would.’” In reply, God shakes his mighty head and says, ‘Are you kidding? I sent you two boats and a helicopter. What more do you want from me?

Then,” said the second instructor, “it’s time that you learned the Outward Bound motto.” “Oh, keen,” I thought. “I’m about to die, and she’s going to give me a motto!” But then she shouted ten words I hope never to forget, words whose impact and meaning I can still feel: “If you can’t get out of it, get into it!” I had long believed in the concept of “the word become flesh” but until that moment I had not experienced it. My teacher spoke words so compelling that they bypassed my mind, went into my flesh, and animated my legs and feet. No helicopter would come to rescue me; the instructor on the cliff would not pull me up with the rope; there was no parachute in my backpack to float me to the ground. There was no way out of my dilemma except to get into it—so my feet started to move and in a few minutes I made it safely down. Why would anyone want to embark on the daunting inner journey about which Annie Dillard writes? Because there is no way out of one’s inner life, so one had better get into it. On the inward and downward spiritual journey, the only way out is in and through.

Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically positive expectations. Be Happier. Be Healthier. Be the Best, better than the rest. Be smarter, faster, richer, sexier, more popular, more productive, more envied and more admired. Be perfect and amazing and crap out twelve-karat-gold nuggets before breakfast each morning while kissing your selfie-ready spouse and two and a half kids goodbye. Then, fly your helicopter to your wonderfully fulfilling job, where you spend your days doing incredibly meaningful work that's likely to save the planet one day. But when you stop and really think about it, conventional life advice - all the positive and happy self-help stuff we hear all the time- is actually fixating on what you lack. This fixation on the positive - on what's better, what's superior - only serves to remind us over and over again of what we are not, of what we lack, of what we should have been but failed to be.

For so long I thought the only real meaning my life held was in seeking revenge for what Troy Memphis did to my family,” I said to her in a low voice, not even certain she could hear me over the roar of the helicopter. “But I was so fucking wrong. So, so wrong, Tatum. Because fearing for your life almost destroyed me. It made me realise that I have so much more to live for than some vendetta. I love you. I love you with everything I am and everything I’ll ever be

From my experience, I knew that if I could make it to a flight nurse in a flight-for-life helicopter, I would have the chance. I have seen flight nurses do incredible things in really bloody, gnarly situations. That became my goal…make it to the helicopter.

Most of my decisions were binary: If we were detected crossing the border would we continue? Yes or no? If we were detected one hundred miles out? Yes or no? Fifty miles out? Yes or no? What if we had mechanical problems with the helicopter one hundred miles out? Fifty miles out?

In the light of the helicopter and perfect chaos, our reunion is near delirious. I’m passed around, hugged and kissed, touched and worshipped. Four men saved my life on the rooftop hanging over us. My debt to them is repaid. Seven has his revenge, served cold and bloody. There’s no fire and death this time. Incendia’s ruin comes in the form of real, tangible justice. For the first time in our lives, the world has sided with us. The truth isn’t something that many can afford, but when you’re stripped of everything, sometimes it’s all you have left. We told ours. We braved the world’s hatred and judgement. We won.

Sandy continually worries about me serving in Vietnam. She fears for me and is always asking herself, Will he be alright? Will he get wounded? Will he get captured? Will he be killed, and I’ll lose another husband? These haunting questions shouldn't be on the mind of any wife for a day, let alone an entire year of their life.

Don’t sabotage yourself by ignoring the fledgling opportunities as they arise. If you meet a person who might be useful to you, don’t drop his card in the trash thinking that if he is fated to help, he’ll do so. It’s like that old joke about a devout man who is drowning, rejecting the help of life guards, a dolphin and a rescue helicopter in order to show God he has faith that God will save him. When he gets to heaven, bitterly complaining about being dead, God says ‘I sent you life guards, a dolphin, even a rescue helicopter, what more could I have done?’ So don’t abandon all personal responsibility, just work diligently, safe in the knowledge that the universe is about to throw you a lifeline to riches.

By the way, I hope I didn’t cause any awkwardness when I mentioned the incident with the soldier, or the checkpoint, or when I reveal that we are living under occupation here. Gunshots and military vehicle sirens, and sometimes the sound of helicopters, warplanes, and shelling, the subsequent wail of ambulances; not only do these noises precede breaking news reports, but now they have to compete with the dog’s barking, too. And the situation has been like this for such a long time that there aren’t many people alive today who remember little details about what life was like before all this, like the detail about the wilting lettuce in an otherwise closed vegetable market, for example.

time. Up in the air, above the situation, he asks if it is really the end of the world if he doesn’t get the job. The answer is ‘No, it isn’t’ and although it is very disappointing, he can deal with the disappointment and consequences because he is an adult Human and not a Chimp or child. He also knows logically that he may still be able to do something about the situation and must not allow the Chimp to think catastrophically. Step 5: He now goes into Human mode and asks himself, ‘What can I do about the situation?’ He answers: ‘I can choose the emotions I want and I can choose to act like an adult. Being emotional isn’t going to help anything, least of all me. I can’t think of anything practical to do at this point in time – this I must accept. I can choose to accept the situation rather than keep on saying “what if” or “this shouldn’t have happened” or even worse, “life should be fair”.’ Step 6: Eddie decides to put his Human in charge and decides to actively change his emotional approach to the situation. On a practical point he considers his options to either wait in the hope that another bus appears or to go home and phone the interview organiser. Step 7: Despite his disappointment he might manage a smile and be thankful that the sun will still rise tomorrow. He remains focused on the solution and not the problem. Of course, you may want to react differently or deal with the situation differently if you were in his position. It is just an example of how it might go. Clearly there are endless possibilities. The main point is that he has decided to act as a Human and not as a Chimp and to choose positive emotions despite the setback. Choice despite seriousness The scenario above was not so serious but what happens if a real crisis occurs? Imagine a young man who has had an accident on a motorbike and has been left paralysed from the waist down. Sadly this is not an uncommon event. How does he deal with this type of crisis? This time when he gets up into the helicopter and tries to gain perspective the answer is not so good. His whole life has just changed and not for the better. It would be totally unreasonable for anyone to say to him get a perspective and smile. He will need to go through a grieving process. All of us respond differently to the same situation, so there are no rights or wrongs when responding to a severe crisis. It is about understanding your response and making choices about how you want to manage it. The simple steps described are helpful for minor crises and immediate and transient stress but they need modifying

Little did I know that it was reported in the media at the time, that the average life expectancy of an Army Helicopter Pilot in combat was only 19 minutes!