Taking Flight With The Brothers Wright

Wilbur Wright was self-confident, controlled and of steady demeanor...Highly intelligent, he was a voracious reader, a talented writer, and a gifted speaker. Outgoing when the circumstances required, he could also isolate himself and shut out the world when he chose.

Wilbur's bright future suddenly changed when he was injured playing an ice hockey type game...He became depressed and withdrew from the world. The confident, robust young Wilbur faded. Uncertain of his health and future, Wilbur dropped his plans to attend Yale and descended into a self-imposed isolation of reading and contemplation.
storytellers, they can show patterns and examples of how to live, they can teach us about the world and ourselves. Movies can touch our fundamental being, recalling and arousing the deepest memories and yearnings of the soul. This is the wellspring that Joseph Campbell talks about when he says, "...myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation."

Reading my journal of 20 years ago is instructive to say the least. I am impressed by the continuity and amazed at the progress and refinement of my purpose, to see what I valued and sought back then is fundamentally the same as what I value and seek now: to pursue the mystery of existence, seek and understand the grandeur of life, and finally make my own contribution to its greater purpose. I share all this to illustrate what has been, and continues to be, a sort of therapy for me, a powerful tool to heal the soul and find one's place within the race, and further still, to manifest and co-create one's destiny. Lesson: Pay attention, there's great power in myth and mythmaking, the heroes we follow and the stories we create.
It's bittersweet to reflect upon it now. In the fall of 1986, freshly married and graduated from the University of Northern Colorado, I began to work on a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences at Wright State University. It was one of the most unique and diverse programs in the country where I could have studied anything from neurochemistry to astrobiology. In addition to all this, I had a full-ride scholarship and an unusually generous stipend. The academic world was my oyster for sure. There was only one problem, I'm not crazy about oysters.
    Orville Wright was more impulsive than his contemplative, thoughtful brother. He had boundless curiosity and energetically pursued a range of interests. His mind was quick and he was always coming up with new inventions. While pursuing the airplane was initially Wilbur's idea, Orville's enthusiasm and optimism were often what carried them through to solutions of difficult technical problems.
I imagine a number of friends and family members thought I was crazy for leaving the program after the first quarter. Looking back on it, I feel especially sorry for my young wife, her new husband with so much promise, now lost. And that was just the beginning of my wild wanderings, as my restless soul needed to find greater meaning and purpose than what the world had so far presented me. Also looking back, if I had known myself better, I would have asked the university to change my major to history, specifically the history of science, engineering and mind, the processes that goes into exploration and creation, the evolution of thought and life. Of course it's only now, after 25 years of exploration, that I'm able to see my passion. Lesson: What looks like failure on the surface is often destiny in disguise.
Brought-on by a few years of post-college floundering, I began an intensive, if informal, study of myself and my world. During this time I filled a dozen journals with lists, questions and thoughts on meaning and purpose. Also at this time I adopted a role model in a fictional scientist by the name of Edward Jessup, a character played by William Hurt in the movie Altered States.

Directed by Ken Russell, Altered States is based on Paddy Chayefsky's book of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the life of "psychonaut" scientist John C. Lilly. Myself a lost graduate school drop-out, I could relate to the character Jessup, a renegade scientist fed-up with his own academic entrapment and paint-by-numbers lifestyle. And just as Jessup's explorations found him using native shaman-prepared psychedelics in combination with extended isolation tank sessions, I too would eventually launch my own voyage of the mind, using cannabis as my sail so to speak, a much friendlier and gentler mind altering agent. Furthermore, taking Jessup's dead-end findings with the isolation tank at face value, I instead immersed myself in the great outdoors.

Despite his lack of interest in formal credentials, Orville, like Wilbur, was committed to broad learning and supplemented his schooling with a great deal of private study.
At first glance, it might seem strange that a single movie could have such a profound influence on a person's life. Yet all these years later it makes complete sense. Movies are the modern-day myth-makers and
How did these two men, working essentially alone and with little formal scientific training, solve a problem so complex and demanding as heavier-than-air flight, which had defied better-known experimenter for centuries?
If I could rewrite my own history at Wright State University, I would write a paper or thesis on the University's namesakes, Orville and Wilbur Wright. For these two giants of men exemplify the human spirit at its best and most creative, innovative, intelligent, perseverant, curious and cooperative. Their remarkable achievement is no less significant than the entry of vertebrates onto land a few hundred million years ago. And the way the brothers got it done is equally instructive of the evolutionary process, the combination and synergy of mind, spirit and intelligence that builds wings and takes heavy bodies to air.

I can't help but wonder if Orville and Wilbur were inspired by the fanciful stories of Jules Verne and his own dreams of manned flight. It's highly likely they read his stories. The Wright brothers grew up surrounded by books, along
with the highly stimulating and intellectual environment fostered by their parents. No doubt the dreams of others sparked the imaginations of Orville and Wilbur, as well as early pioneers in the field such as Otto Lilienthal, whose death during one of his glider flights became the critical inspiration in the Wright's decision to began serious flight research.
The Wright brothers had a variety of individual talents, skills and personality traits that complemented one another. Relying on each other's strengths and compensating for each other's weaknesses was crucial to their invention of the airplane. Neither probably could have achieved alone what they did as a team.
The story of the Wright brothers is a lesson in evolution. A study of their history at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum gives a readily palpable sense of the creative-engineering process at work; from the Wright's early inspiration and upbringing by supportive parents---who were themselves role models, the father an intellectual minister pioneer, and the mother a mechanical wizard homemaker of extraordinary talent---to the brothers early and ongoing collaboration, the joining and interplay of their complementary intellects, temperaments and abilities, and then the direct application of this coupled fraternal force to their endeavors as printers, bicyclers and finally airplane engineers and builders.

The Wright's is a lesson in the power of creative synergy for sure. And just as sure, theirs is a lesson in balance...balance in spirit...bravery and intelligence...to go where none had gone before and do so with sufficient testing and planning to minimize risk...balance in matter and mind....balance in creation and cooperation...balance in engineering and imagination. These two brothers, two humans of different but complementary natures, worked together to do the heretofore impossible. Indeed, the Wright's is a lesson in the creative process...the power of synergy...the necessity balance...and perhaps most importantly...Vision!

...how adept both Wilbur and Orville were at moving back and forth between the abstract and the concrete. They had great capacity for creating conceptual models of a solution to a problem that could then be transformed into practical hardware. Visual thinking was a critical aspect of this process. The Wright brothers' use of graphic mental imagery to conceptualize basic structures and mechanisms was among the most important elements of their inventive method.*
* all quotes, Wright Brothers Exhibition, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum