Let a Hundred Balloons Fly

A Lesson in Letting Go and Seeing What Soars

In elementary school, we had a ritual that, by today’s standards, would raise immediate environmental red flags. But back then, it felt like pure magic. Each student was handed a helium balloon with a card tied to the string. On cue, we released them in unison into the sky—hundreds of balloons lifting all at once, like a symphony of possibility. The cards invited whoever found them to write back and let us know where the balloon had landed. Then we’d chart its location on an ambitious map of Canada in our school hallway.

Some balloons got caught in the nearest tree. Some escaped prematurely, released by eager hands before the principal said go. Others floated into the distance until they were just dots, indistinguishable from birds or stars. Our imaginations took over from there: Could mine reach another province? Another country? Every few weeks, a letter would arrive in the mail—a card had returned. And with it, the proof that at least one of our balloons had gone somewhere. As a school, we celebrated those moments. One balloon’s success was a victory for all of us.

Looking back, I’ve come to see that balloon launch not just as a thrilling childhood memory, but as a metaphor for launching ideas into the world.

When we’re building something—whether it’s a business, a creative practice, or a new way of working—there’s often an urge to wait until we’re sure. To refine the idea until it’s perfect, then place all our energy and hope into that one polished offering. But the truth is, most ideas won’t come back. They’ll get stuck in a tree. They’ll drift off course. And that’s not failure—it’s part of the deal.

What matters is that we keep launching.

Research on entrepreneurship and creative innovation backs this up. In Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World, author Anne-Laure Le Cunff encourages taking small, curiosity-driven steps as a way to learn, adapt, and make progress without the pressure of rigid goals. These “tiny experiments” are low-risk but high-learning—real-world actions that help us explore what works, what feels meaningful, and what wants to evolve.

In her work on “effectual reasoning,” business professor Saras D. Sarasvathy emphasizes the importance of experimenting with multiple affordable losses rather than going all-in on a single high-stakes idea. Start small. Start often. See what comes back. This doesn’t mean scatter your attention everywhere. It means allow yourself the grace to try. 

So this is an invitation to have more than one balloon in the sky. To experiment. To put things out into the world before they’re fully formed. To understand that not every effort needs to carry the weight of your entire future. Some will land close to home—small but meaningful wins. A few might travel further than you ever imagined. And most will simply lift off, never to be heard from again, except in that inner place that remembers how it felt to watch them go.

Let your ideas fly. Let them go a little early. Let them get stuck sometimes. Just make sure you have more than one in the air.

And when something comes back—no matter how far it’s traveled—mark it on your map. Celebrate it. Then launch again.