Leave your excuses behind

The other day, someone told me the story of the man that flew over 100 years before the Wright Brothers did. His name? Diego Marín Aguilera. I had never heard of him before, but his story resonated with me more than I anticipated.

As the son of two farmers, he spent much of his day caring for the animals, which entailed much time spent outdoors where he became entranced by the flight of birds. Diego is described as having been incredibly intelligent and, aside from his farming duties, he invented various devices that improved the productivity of some of the already existing agricultural and farming tools. This ingenious nature, in combination with his love of watching birds fly, soon made him explore the possibility of fabricating a device that would allow him to fly. He studied the flight of eagles and vultures, setting up traps to be able to examine the birds and their wings closely. Finally, he worked with a blacksmith to create a metal structure on which to place the feathers that would help him fly. On May 15th of 1793, he decided to test his invention by throwing himself off of a tower, and announcing that he would be back in a few days. He said he would fly. He threw himself. Guess what? He flew. He didn’t get as far as he wanted to, but he did achieve an impressive 360 meters (remember, this is a man with a metal structure with actual feathers attached to it, don’t tell me it’s anything other than impressive). After his rough landing, people thought he was crazy, they burnt his invention, and his flying days ended. He died a few years later of sadness, or so they say. I know, the end is heartbreaking. But I like to think about the positive part of this story. He was a visionary, and as such, a “madman” in the eyes of others.

But how does this relate to us? Well, it made me think about the risks we take in life. How many times do we let excuses hold ourselves back? We’ve probably all been guilty of not trying something because “it is too hard” or because you’ll never be “good enough”. How many times do we look at people who already have the life we want and mumble “they are just way luckier than I am” or “they had innate talent, which I don’t”. If you have never had any of these thoughts, just know that you are my hero. However, more often than not, we try to protect ourselves from the pain of failure with these excuses. When we decide not to take a risk it’s enormously due to the fear of failing outweighing our desire to succeed. What we call “luck” or “talent” are probably hours and hours of work behind the scenes. Sometimes we are not aware of it, but other times we just can’t see ourselves sacrificing that much our time. We think that they had it “easier”,and we resort to blame. Blame your loved ones for not supporting you, blame the economy for the lack of financing, blame yourself for not having been blessed with a talent that blows everyone away. Stop for a second and think about it. Is it really all as bleak as you are picturing it? Is there really no way for you to take a risk? Is there not a single minute in your day, in which to start pursuing what you love? If you still have something or someone to blame, you’re probably in denial. Or, perhaps you just don’t want it as much as you think you do.

Diego attempted to fly in the late 1700s. It may not seem like a crazy idea now that we’ve already seen flying humans, but back in the day it was like saying you could actually read people’s mind, something out of an X-MEN movie (I think it was even more outrageous). What were the possibilities of his success? I’m pretty sure they were far fewer than the possibilities of you succeeding at that one thing that is terrifying you. Yet he did it, and he did actually fly, lets not forget about that. So how about it? How about we channel our inner Diego and start fighting for what we want instead of hiding behind excuses? After all, we probably do have it easier than he did.