Airplanes have always been a significant part of my life.  My mom’s a flight attendant, so we travel a lot.  I’ve been to over twenty countries and have been on countless planes.

It was summer of 2010.  I was on my way home from my first big college visitation with my parents.  It was a normal plane ride; the food was mediocre and babies continuously cried.  I was playing a game on my iPod and my parents were watching a movie.  Then the plane shifted to the right.  Turbulence - normal stuff.  Then it shifted left.  Must be a bad storm.  Then we dipped down.  The flight attendants were yelling at the passengers to sit down.  My mom slammed each of our tray tables up, grabbed our hands, and told us she loved us.  Remember, my mom’s a flight attendant; I knew it must be bad.

After about 15 seconds, the shaking stopped.  We were okay!  I wiped the tears off of my face as the pilot told us that we had been caught in another plane’s jet stream and that everything would be okay.  I was terrified the rest of the flight and was so happy when we landed.

Flash forward to present day, February 5, 2011.  It’s almost 11:00 PM and I’m sitting in my room typing this blog.  I’ve been thinking all day about how to start my tumblr account, and this seemed like the perfect beginning.  I considered explaining who I am, but I don’t think that I can do that - I’m a little more complicated than that.  However, I believe that through stories, parts of who I am unravel.

Besides being a terrifying, there is a message in this story.  That day, I was not afraid of the act of dying - I’m fully aware that I will die at some point.  What I was afraid of was losing my life.  To me, life is too precious to end so quickly.

I do believe that I have lived a good life.  I am proud of my accomplishments and look forward to the future.  Throughout the rest of my life, I plan on doing more things amazing things; this way, when I die, I will have a smile on my face and my family will be able to say that Garrett truly lived.  If there is truth in the saying “Life isn’t about the number of breaths you take, it’s the moments that take your breath away,” then I believe that I’ve lived a full life.  I’ve eaten South African chocolate on top of the Swiss Alps; I’ve swam with a pod of wild dolphins; I’ve slept under the stars in Malaysia where the moon is upside-down.  

These are the moments that make life so incredible.  These are the moments that I live for.  But it’s not just these huge events that I live for.  It’s swimming in the freezing ocean with friends.  It’s sitting in a quite room and just dreaming.  It’s laughing at that joke that nobody but one other person understands.  It’s loving people with all your heart, trusting them with everything, knowing that they’re the ones that can hurt you the most, and not caring because you know that it’s worth it.  It’s taking risks.  It’s singing to the radio.  It’s splashing in puddles.  It’s not taking a single breath for granted.

Life gets complicated sometimes.  It’s full of heartbreaks, tears, pain, loss… But what makes life worth it is that there are so many amazing moments to outweigh this sadness.  In my caption, I told you that I would help you find the key to happiness.  Maybe the point of life is to stop worrying about finding happiness and to let it find you.

Last summer, I though I was going to die.  Seeing death in plain sight brought me so much closer to life.  Life is precious if you believe it is.  Welcome to my tumblr.