Maybe where you live, helicopters fly by every day. Me, the closest I get is drying my hair in the morning. But every now and then, a helicopter does pass overhead in Munich.
Most of the time, they are small city helicopters. The police checking a scene from above or making a safety round trip over the whole town. But every now and then, we get a big one.
It could be a military-grade helicopter or a bigger transport vehicle. Sometimes, you can even spot a tandem-rotor helicopter, which are usually from the “Bundeswehr,” Germany’s armed forces.
Given their rare sightings, spotting a helicopter has always been an event for me. To this day, I’ll say, “Look, a helicopter!” even if whoever’s with me is completely nonplussed by the approaching rotor sounds. But not today.
Today, I was meditating. Sitting cross-legged in a fold-out chair which I parked in the early-morning sun for 15 minutes, I heard the sound while my eyes were closed. “Oh, that’s a helicopter!” It sounded like a big one, too. In my mind, I could already see it. Was it an armed one? A Chinook?
As the noise of its spinning blades slowly went from my left side to my right, I really wanted to look—but meditation is meditation, and so I kept my eyes closed. I tried to stay present, enjoy the sound, and let my thoughts pass through, the way I always do when I meditate.
A few minutes later, my alarm rang, and that was that. No helicopter today. That’s okay, you know?
Take even the small reminders that you’ll never witness everything. They’ll prepare you for the days when you’ll have to forgo the big stuff. Accept missing the helicopter, and the next large loss will sting slightly less—and hopefully, that, too, will be a rare occurrence in your town.
