"Cleared For Takeoff"

When I was in middle and high school, I wanted to join the Marines and be an F-18 pilot. I read books about pilots, training, the military; I joined Civil Air Patrol; I played lacrosse to have a sport in my high school resume, because it would look good on an application for a pilot slot. I even went to a military college.

Those dreams were shattered when I began having problems in lacrosse. As a goalie in a poor start-up league team, I played with no goalie pants and got hit in the knees at least twice a week (and it's a hard rubber ball about the size of a baseball, very painful). Running was never easy for me to begin with, but it kept getting more and more painful until I quit my senior year to "focus on schoolwork". The ROTC program in college just made my knees exponentially worse, and I eventually had arthroscopic surgery on both. They felt better for a few months, then it all just went downhill.
TL;DR I was never going to join the military, never mind be a fighter pilot.

Seeing this photo today stirred an exhilaration I haven't felt in 10 years, but it was quickly quashed by the "reasonable" side of me. "It won't ever happen, so why get excited about it?"
Then I realized that this is what happens every time I see or think about something I used to care about or enjoy, and over the years, it's become so automatic that I almost never have that initial feeling of excitement at all anymore. My brain is protecting me from itself.

Sure, I could take the attitude of "stick it to the man" and try to force myself to feel those things, as a rebellion... but I don't want that either. I don't want "happiness" or excitement or passion to be just flipping the bird to my screwed up psyche. That's just anger masked as excitement or passion or happiness.

I want REAL happiness.