Chester’s Tips for Success

Today is my first day of rest since the Saga International Balloon Fiesta began ten days ago. It’s nice to be able to take a nice breather and wake up at a normal hour (7am instead of 5am) but I do miss the fun of waking up early to see the sun rise as amidst all the hustle and bustle of all the pilots and the staff. This event was the most exciting and interesting week that I’ve had in Saga since I’ve arrived and it probably won’t get much better than this past week. Looking back on the past week I am amazed by how much I’ve learned and experienced in such a short span of time. During the week I helped out as a translator and crew for a team from Michigan. Although they were flying simply for fun and not for the competition, we still had to go through the same motions as all the other pilots. I think the most interesting part of the crewing experience was getting to chat with the chaser while we made sure not to let the pilot out of our site. (The chaser is to the hot air balloon as an airport is to an airplane, without the chaser, the balloonist has no way of getting home with the balloon) Through the many conversations I had with Scott (the pilot) and his chasers (Joe and Mike) I realized that my decision to come to Japan was born out of a desire to learn more about myself and life through meeting new people and having new experiences.

I’ve come to realize a couple things about myself that I believe will prove useful in helping me chart out a course towards the future:

1. I am a through and through an inquisitive person curious about all types of things and subjects, but most specifically things that concern people and their lives.
2. I draw on personal experience far more naturally than on abstract concepts or theorems.
3. I try to hard to be the type of person that people will respect, admire and like, rather than on trying hard to be the best me that I can be.
4. I need to define a major goal at every major juncture in life to keep me on track. In high school it was college, in college it was getting the diploma and now that I’m done with school I am faced with the hardest decision thus far, which is– what should I do with my life?
5. We’re all born into certain circumstances but those circumstances need not determine the kind of person we become. For example, Scott was raised to take over his family’s hotel business but he was born to be a PR and marketing expert and that realization came to him along the way.
6. Everyone has their own unique journey; although we can learn from each other and share the wisdom that we’ve gained through our own experiences, in the end we have to be bold enough to step out on our own and make our own decisions along the way.
7. Life is not a race. I’m beginning to realize this more and more as I meet people who are much older and wiser than me, yet I still have a long way to go in truly embracing this truth. Since everyone’s path is unique it makes no sense to see ourselves as participants in a race or competition. The start and finish lines are different for each person as are the checkpoints. When you start thinking of your life’s journey as a competition with others it is easy to lose sight of where you are going.
8. Success has little meaning if it cannot be shared with others.
9. Life is all about the people you meet and grow to love.
10. My best life teachers are the people that I meet along the way.

Although I certainly learned a lot more than these ten points, these are the one’s that have come to mind first. Over the last few weeks since I’ve come to Japan I’ve been wrestling with a lot of conflicting thoughts, regrets and what if’s. Looking back on my four years in college, I couldn’t help the nagging feeling that I’ve wasted a lot of time and made a lot of stupid choices. But this past week gave me the perspective I needed to understand that my past choices were simply part of a constantly unfolding process of realization as I journeyed along my unique and individual path. My decision to take the courses that I took, to not study computer science or engineering as my father earnestly hoped I would, and my decision to spend a year abroad in Japan, China and Berlin are all vital parts in my life’s journey. It’s easy for me to look back and think, “If I had listened to my father I would be in a much better position to help him, or if I had stuck it through with X I would be at point Y now.” but such thoughts point only to my lack of understanding of my own individual journey, my own unique story. I have dreams of helping my dad help the world through implementing his inventions as well as my own dreams of becoming a world famous writer, film maker, advocate and philanthropist, but these dreams and goals are markers that I’ve thrown out into the abyss of what’s to come and while they provide me milestones to work towards, they do not tell me anything about how I am supposed to get there. My father has spent the last forty years of his life working towards his dream of helping the world through his inventions yet he still has not been able to make a significant impact on the world; but that hasn’t phased him in the slightest, because although he doesn’t know how he’s going to get there my father knows, without a doubt, where he is going. He knows where he is going because he understands the purpose of his journey and that is to help people through his gift of developing new technologies.

Something that I realized when talking with Mike about religion and spirituality is that everyone is wired differently. We all think differently and operate differently than everyone else, thus it makes no sense for us to try and be like anyone else but ourselves. Because we are all wired differently, the way in which we can contribute to the world and what we can offer people is always unique. I am convinced that in order for us to truly embrace the purpose of our journey, we have to embrace our individual uniqueness. Copying or mimicking the actions, decisions and choices of others only detracts us from a deeper understanding of who we are and who we were created to be.

I apologize if this post is a bit confusing, I am still thinking through many of these ideas. I will definitely follow up on some of these thoughts so there will be more discussion on this in the next few days. I am also still in the process of fixing up my website so there may be some inconsistencies with links and such, I will try and have those corrected asap.

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