One of those moments

Every once in a while, life collides to create a “moment”…today was one of those days.

I had a groupon for the Caramel Crepery at the Forks…and so we went for crepes today at lunchtime…one of the group heard that Red Bull Stratos was happening…Felix Baumgartner was attempting to break the sound barrier as an individual in free flight, climbing into the very highest parts of the earth’s atmosphere before going into a free fall.

So…there we were…sitting at a table in the Forks Market huddled over an iPhone watching the Youtube stream live. No one had any headphones, so one of the group had another iPhone on the station listening to the broadcast of the dialogue between Col Joe Kittinger…listening them go through many items on their checklist, methodically checking to ensure everything was in place…and sharing that info with the rest of us in relay fashion. We heard Joe’s occasional encouraging phrases to him…”Atta boy, that’s good”…as he helped Felix break his own records. He was encouraging in the face of great danger, even while he was calmly helping Felix ensure everything was in place.

As we watching history take place, we were huddled around this little screen…with long gaps of waiting before the jump took place…and we had a chance to chat as a family about:

courage and bravery and what motivates people to do great things
courage and bravery and how to follow through on decisions that feel terrifying
on ethics and Red Bull and marketing and strategic success…Red Bull is officially not to be drunk by our household…but we are all aware that some junior members have had occasions where they choose otherwise.
on mentoring as Joe helped Felix break his own record
on the care and attention to detail that impacts on safety
the advantage of reading the news (as I had this morning so I had trivia on the event that the others hadn’t)
on what this would be like for his family to watch
on what it would be like for viewers and his family if something went wrong (and I recalled the tragedy of the Challenger with teacher Christa McAulliffe…it wasn’t supposed to go wrong, but it did)

In short, we had a lot of excitement and a lot of fun as we anticipated this moment in history with many others as it happened (almost) live. We had discussion about issues that are important…I couldnt’a scripted it…you just can’t sit down and say, “Let’s have a discussion about values and character and fear and team work and a whole bunch of other critical things”.

We watched the numbers on the altitude, on the air pressure. We speculated about what was happening and why…we challenged each other on air pressure, temperature facts and altitude factors to contemplate the danger…it was a living science experiment.

We cheered when he jumped, and held our breath as he spun around, and laughed with relief when cheers erupted with his team when he regained control.

Felix gave us that opportunity…thanx Felix for being an important part of our day today. Your work was important for science, for marketing, for your success…but it was also important for how it gathered one little family around the screen. We watched your mom cry when you left, cheer when you landed. We heard Col. Joe entrust you to a guardian angel. We now know that your line as you stood waiting to jump was: “Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you are”.

And I think we understood that in addition to science and marketing, there was something magical about the moment that was good for us.

Thanx, Felix