Every time I come through OR Tambo, having checked in and whilst making my way to the security check-in, I stop and watch those guys selling toy helicopters. They’re masterful. The toy is simple. It goes up and it goes down, as all helicopters do.

What these ‘pilots’ do, is to make it look like an art form. Poetry in motion. The helicopter goes up, right up, it flies forward, and it comes back to them. Right into the hand it left, as if some sort of homing-signal is involved.

I’ve never purchased one, and I have no idea how much they cost? I’m suspicious. Suspicious because I’ve been to Hamleys in London. It’s the same sales process employed. Wonderfully simple Toys, executed masterfully the hands of their demonstrator. Only to find that once you’ve shelled out your money, and arrived back at home, that it doesn’t execute in your hands as it did in the hands of the demonstrator.

Once I pass those ‘pilots’, as I check in through security, I also always pause a bit and wonder about the life I live and those people all around me? I wonder how often I’m duped into believing that things are easy, because I’ve been watching a masterful execution. Lots of topics come to mind:

  • Leadership
  • Being a dad
  • Marriage
  • Friendship
  • Completing the Cape Epic
  • Investing money
  • Running a Business

I suspect those ‘pilots’ go through hours and hours of training before they make it onto the floor of OR Tambo? And I suspect those people I encounter each and every day, who execute so beautifully have done the same. Hours and hours, years and years of practice. In there taking risks, failing, succeeding and failing some more. Masterful execution isn’t easy. That’s why it’s masterful. It represents commitment and dedication. I wish I remembered that more.

 

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