Stephen Stills “Treetop Flyer”

So here’s a song about coming back from Vietnam, a pilot with a unique and marketable skill set, and running drugs for a living.

What wouldn’t be inspiring about a song like that for a blog topic ?

Actually, when I heard this yesterday for the first time in a while, it was one line that really caught my attention and made the wheels start to turn.

It wasn’t that I thought about going to pilot’s school and figuring out a way to ramp up our income….start flying shipments into Colorado….maybe taking a load up to Washington state when I go to visit my relatives.

It wasn’t anything like that…although you do have to wonder what kind of trouble you’d get in if you flew into a state that had “sort of” legalized the weed.

Maybe you get in trouble for flying too low? What would I do for treetops in the Dakotas?

I don’t know.

I’m not going to go to pilot school….not even for entrepreneurial reasons.

But the line in the song that caught my attention was the one early in the song where he said, ” I don’t do business that don’t make me smile.”

HE SAYS “DON’T” TOO MANY TIMES IN THAT SENTENCE!!! THE SECOND “DON’T” SHOULD BE “DOESN’T”!!! HAH!!! STEPHEN STILLS DON’T KNOW GOOD ENGLISH TALKING!!!

Kidding….that wasn’t what caught my attention. That would be crazy.

It was the “smiling” and “business” connection.

What a great business model! That’s fantastic!

To be able to ask the question “Would it make me smile?” before taking on a job…and to be able to come up with an affirmative answer…sounds good to me.

Now, of course, that is kind of a luxury to only take jobs that make you smile.

Who has that kind of luxury in their lives?

Not many folks that I know, actually.

But here’s another big “what if”…and I guess that’s a luxury that I have at 5:00 AM that everyone has any time of the day…the ability to toss out a bunch of “what ifs”…so here’s the “what if” I was promising…..

“What if” it wasn’t so much about having the good fortune to only have job options that were so wonderful that you couldn’t help but smile…but instead of that it was a continuous situation where you carried your smile with you to any job that came your way?

What if your situation didn’t define your happiness?

What if your joy infected your environment…and not the other way around, where you were constantly disappointed and angry unless your situation seemed “just so”?

What if? What if?! What if?

I thought back to some of my “crummy” jobs…crazy jobs, leaf in the wind “how did I land here” jobs…and I thought about how hilarious most of them were.

Horrible entries on a résumé…but hilarious. I met some great folks along the way. I had a good time in spite of the job.

I had a good time doing a good job doing a job that wasn’t good.

It doesn’t get “mo’ bettah” than that.

Not even flying low over strange new treetops.

That does sound kind of cool and dangerous, though.