The First Gate to the Sky

Morning Reflection

In the mid-1970s, my father—may he rest in peace—gave me three thousand dollars.
It was all he could afford to offer, yet to me it felt more valuable than all the treasures of the world.

Along with it came a one-way ticket: from Amman to the United States—first to New York, and then onward to Oklahoma City.

I carried a small suitcase… and an English language ability that was barely enough for a simple conversation.
But I also carried something heavier than money and language combined:
a quiet dream that had lived inside me for years—to become a pilot.

When the aircraft doors closed and the roar of the engines began to rise, I felt that the takeoff was not merely a movement toward the sky.
It was a quiet separation between who I had been… and who I might one day become.

Evening Reflection

In the quiet of evening, when I return in memory to that first journey in the mid-1970s, I no longer see it as a simple trip across continents. It now feels like a philosophical turning point in the life of a young man who did not yet understand its depth. I was standing at the edge of two worlds: one I knew well and had just left behind, and another whose shape had not yet been formed. A small suitcase, a few thousand dollars, and uncertain English—yet somehow it was enough to place me face to face with the larger question: what can a human being become when he finds the courage to begin from nothing?

I sat beside the window of a Boeing 747, watching that enormous machine carve its path through the sky with quiet confidence. Inside me there was a strange dual feeling: one part of me was simply a young passenger sitting quietly by the window, while another part imagined himself one day inside the cockpit, guiding that very aircraft through the clouds. The dream felt distant, yet in that moment it did not feel impossible. I had the sense that the sky was not merely above me—it was waiting for me.

As the aircraft climbed above the clouds, the view seemed like another world. The clouds turned into floating white islands suspended in an endless blue, and sunlight streamed through them like golden threads connecting earth and sky. In that moment I understood something deeper: the sky is not only a physical space, but also a metaphor for human life itself. We all travel between the ground we know and a future that has not yet been born—between the certainty we leave behind and the mystery we move toward.

I stared into that boundless horizon and realized that life rarely reveals itself all at once. It unfolds slowly, like the horizon outside the window: every time you think you have reached it, it moves slightly farther away, revealing another distance, another possibility. I did not know how I would master the language, how I would build a life in a new country, or how I would reach the dream of flying. Yet I began to understand that the path does not require us to know the ending—it only asks that we find the courage to begin.

From that journey onward, I carried a simple but profound realization: some journeys are not measured by the miles between two cities, but by the distance a person travels within himself. The aircraft was climbing into the sky, but the true ascent was happening inside me. Somewhere among those clouds, a new version of myself quietly began to take shape—someone who understood that the sky is not merely a distant destination, but an open invitation for those who dare to dream… and then walk steadily toward that dream, one step at a time.