By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif.—Every so often friends will give to me the books they have written not for profit, nor for fame, but simply because they wanted to set down some thoughts and to share them with others.   One such friend is Sandy Goodkin, a San Diegan who is considered an expert on development, housing and building trends. 

Sandy and his wife, Fran, have been active members of the San Diego Jewish community —Sandy as a president of the regional chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, Fran as president of Congregation Beth Am, a Conservative shul.  Sandy’s book, written in 2004 and illustrated with a picture of an eagle in flight, is My Spririt is Soaring. He printed 1,000 copies ands today has but a handful left.

The illustration was an appropriate one because Goodkin’s notion of “soaring” or perhaps of what others might call “rising above yourself” was stimulated one day when realizing that “there was something mesmerizing about the great bird’s flight: the elevation, the ease, the sheer miracle of flight.  Somehow, it knew the waves of currents which could effortlessly carrry it, for miles…”

A person’s mind can be like that soaring eagle, Goodkin wrote in the preface of his 91-page booklet.  It can be “free to explore, free to discover its own ‘currents.’  The sheer exploration of your freedom can be exhilirating.”

Ecclesiastes teaches that to every thing there is a season, and Goodkin suggests adding such corollaries to the Biblical book as there is a “time for preoccupation with tomorrow and a time for soaring; a time to be earth-bound with troubles thoroughly human, and a time for finding wings to lift us out of the ordinary into the extraordinary.”

Reaching into his world of real estate for a metaphor, Goodkin suggests that people are willing to pay more for an apartment on an upper story of a high rise building because the height “lifts us out of the street-level of life, up into the stratosphere of perspective.”

He has known many people who have “soared” over their disadvantages, be they physical or economic.  For example, he tells of Gale Walker, a mother of two boys, who cared for a terminally ill mother until her money ran out.  She went on welfare, just as the government mandated that welfare recipients be required work for their payments.

“Gale decided that many of these welfare mothers would need to find a place where their children could go to pre-school,” Goodkin writes.  “She created the ‘Children of the Rainbow,’ in her tiny home, got insurance and the powers-to-be to approve her idea, and now has over 100 full time employees, many of them former welfare mothers.”

Sherry Wolf is another “soarer” in the Goodkin pantheon.  Undeterred by Parkinson’s Disease, she exhibited courage, smiles and continuing professionalism, prompting Goodkin to realize that “one has to be careful not to insult a courageous person by thinking that she must be pitied, for she still contains a soul that is hungry to soar, to get well above the reality of her condition.”

Tim Larrick, battling pancreatic cancer, also drew Goodkin’s admiration.  “He has entered another phase of chemo and realizes how powerful a smile is when he shares it with any one who cares how he feels. The greatest change is rationing his strength and hoping that his friends comprehend hat he is doing.”

”Life is a never ending journey into self-discovery,” Goodkin suggests. “You learn more about yourself. As you grow older you discover that your bones may creak more, but that your mind can be expanded through usage.”

There are various mechanisms for helping your imagination lift off for soaring.  For Goodkin’s wife, Fran, the pleasure comes in bite size chocolate candies.   For his friend Annie Gentry, it came in humor.  “When I’d write to her—wondering if her surgery were over—whether she had been released from the hospital, never knowing whehter I was writing to a dead spirit or a live one; then I would receive a reply, filled with descriptive humor, rare original poetry, words that were elegant, marvelously expressive… I was so inspired that my spirit would soar to some impossible height to join with hers.”

There were other times Goodkin felt himself soaring  Once, traveling by plane to Chicago, he was seated next to a woman who had been recently widowed. “I eventually understood how sad this occasion was because of her loss and her gathering old age. She was still on the plane, waiting for the next lap of the trip, when I returned with a box of candy and a card, because it was Mothers’ Day.  Her eyes filled with tears at a stranger’s kindness and my heart filled with joy that my values had reminded me of her need..

“It is so easy to make someone else’s spirit soar!  The reward is legion and instant.  The unexpected sharing of yourself and small remembrance can be a miracle of God’s.  I shall never forget that moment when I looked into her eyes….”