Hi Everyone This posting is based on a "Pilot's Story" I read a long long time ago, from somewhere I do not remember. I have faithfully recreated it and it seems that I have captured the essence of it to a "T". I have added a transition analogy as well.
Please enjoy.
IntroductionIn a far far far away galaxy a very determined space pilot was having yet another argument with his space ship. He knew it could turn tighter. The ship knew it could disobey. After three cups of synthetic space coffee he had charts on the floor, equations on the walls, scribbles on his hands plus a secret formula that almost worked.
One day he caught up with a calm space engineer and told him about his problem. What they did not notice was an older professor standing nearby quietly listening in.
Between them the three would soon uncover the same solution to the turning problem, first with pages of trial and error, then with one tidy engineering page, finally with just a few lines of neat maths from the professor, three very different amounts of effort for the same answer.
Transition in this galaxy can feel very similar. Some people have to bulldoze a path, some get to use a spade, some find a spoon already waiting for them. The Pilot's story tells what happened in that far away galaxy, then "Transition in this galaxy" shows how those bulldozer, spade, spoon ideas can describe real transition journeys with therapists, community plus Susan's Place Transgender Resources in the role of a quiet professor who helps you find a formula that works for you.
Pilot's storyHe was a space pilot before he was anything else. Equations were just things that lived in the back of the flight manual.
One day he was trying to predict something simple but important, the turning radius of his space ship in a level bank at different speeds. The manual had charts. The charts were slow. He wanted a quick mental rule so he could glance at the gauges, do a little arithmetic and know exactly how to achieve what he wanted without using the charts.
So he did what space pilots do. He experimented.
He took the performance charts, copied numbers into a notebook, tried to fit straight lines and little curves through them, rearranged the basic formulas he half remembered from flight school, squared some things, took square roots of others. Every time the answer looked close he adjusted a constant, tried again, erased a line or two and continued.
After a week of this he had a formula. It worked. It covered several pages of his notebook, full of crossed out attempts and hand drawn arrows. He could not really explain why it worked, only that if you plugged in the speed and bank angle the answer matched the chart.
He was proud of it anyway.
A few days later he ran into the flight engineer, someone who actually enjoyed the theory behind all this. The pilot showed him the notebook.
The engineer frowned, flipped back and forth through the pages, then said, "I see what you are doing. The physics is hiding in there. Let me show you a cleaner way."
They went to a whiteboard. The engineer started with the forces in a coordinated turn, wrote the lift equation, resolved it into vertical and horizontal components, set centripetal force equal to the horizontal component of lift, cancelled the mass, rearranged the result.
In one page they had essentially the same formula the pilot had sweated over. Every term had a reason, every constant had a name.
The pilot nodded. It all felt much less mysterious now.
Standing nearby was a professor who had helped design the space ship years before. He had been watching quietly. He walked over, took the marker without a word and in two lines wrote:
- The vector equation for circular motion.
- The lift constraint in a level coordinated turn.
He did one substitution, one simplification and the same formula dropped out of the algebra. No trial and error, no side calculations, no "fudge factors" at all. He added two more lines to what he had already written down.
The pilot stared at the three derivations, his scattered pages, the engineer's neat page, the professor's four lines. The professor smiled and said:
"Your method was like digging a flowerbed with a bulldozer. Our engineer here used a good solid spade. By the time you know the landscape well enough you can do the same job with a spoon."
The pilot thought about that for a long time.
He kept his old notebook anyway. It reminded him that there are many ways to reach the right answer, that understanding lets you use lighter tools, that brute force gets you there eventually but insight lets you travel light.
Transition in this galaxyBulldozer level – hard, lonely, trial and errorThis level is like the space pilot filling pages to get a working formula without really knowing why it works.
For transition that might look like growing up with almost no language for what you are feeling. There is no clear pathway, very little information, maybe unsure or unsupportive doctors who do not understand gender issues. You try things in private, hiding a lot, testing clothes, names, documents, small changes that feel risky even when they are small on paper.
You might find one sympathetic doctor by luck, then another, slowly building a path from scraps of advice. Getting surgery or hormones may only happen after years of pushing, writing letters, travelling long distances, collecting documents again and again.
The person is doing enormous emotional and practical work to carve out a path almost from scratch. The result can be good, yet the cost is very high. If this sounds like your story, there is nothing wrong with the way you found your path, you did what you could with the tools that were available. At this level there may be no therapist at all, or the first therapists do not understand transgender people, so most of the load stays on the person themselves. This is the path of pioneers who had almost no maps yet kept going anyway with heavy work and a great deal of courage.
Spade level – structured but still heavy workThis level matches the flight engineer who knows the theory well enough to get the formula in one page.
For transition that might be finding good information through community groups, books, online forums that share real experience instead of misinformation. People start to use an established clinical pathway with guidelines, assessments, referrals that give structure instead of pure guesswork.
There is a clearer sense of which documents to change, in what order, which laws apply to names, markers, passports and licences. There are at least some supportive professionals who can say "this is the next step" instead of leaving you to guess everything alone.
You still have appointments, waiting lists, gatekeeping and life disruption. You are digging hard, but at least with the right tool in roughly the right place. A therapist who understands transgender clients can work like that flight engineer with the spade, helping to turn scattered experiences into a clear sequence of steps. This level is already a big step forward because good information plus supportive professionals share the load.
Spoon level – light touch built on deep understandingThis level is like the professor who arrives at an equation in a couple of lines because the structure is clear in their head.
For transition that could mean having a solid inner understanding of yourself, so you choose only the steps you actually need instead of trying every possible path. You know the medical, social, legal pieces well enough to avoid wasted effort and you can see how they fit together.
You are using systems that are already designed with gender variance in mind, so paperwork and procedures do not fight you at every turn. You have people around you who already "get it" so you do not have to argue for your existence at every step. A knowledgeable therapist is working from the same map as you, not asking you to teach basic concepts while you are also trying to stay afloat.
From the outside it can look easy or simple. In reality the apparent ease comes from standing on top of a lot of hard work that others have already done plus your own clarity about what is necessary. The spoon only exists because earlier generations did bulldozer work and spade work, then therapists and communities turned that experience into clear pathways.
Susan's Place Transgender Resources (SPTR) works like that quiet professor with the spoon. It collects what others have learned and turns it into guides, discussions and examples so you can move forward with less digging than if you tried to invent everything alone.
Why this story mattersThe bulldozer, the spade and the spoon can all move earth. In the same way very different transition stories can reach a similar place. None of these journeys makes a person more real or more valid than another, they simply reflect how much support and structure was available at the time. The hard pioneering paths do not become wrong just because later paths are smoother, they are the reason smoother paths exist at all.
What changes is how much understanding, support and structure you have, which decides whether you end up pushing a bulldozer, swinging a spade or quietly working with a spoon. You can push or drive the bulldozer by yourself, you can swing the spade with a few helpers or you can sit with the professor who has the spoon. Susan's Place Transgender Resources is that professor in this story, ready to help you reach your transition goals faster with fewer wrong turns than trying to go alone.
EpilogueSomewhere in that far far away galaxy the pilot is still out there flying happy little circles and smiling every time the space ship turns exactly where the maths says it should.
Have a safe journey.
Best Wishes AlwaysSarah BGlobal Moderator@Lori Dee @Northern Star Girl
