Our people page on Richard Bach

More from and about
Richard Bach
(biographical info at bottom of page)

Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished:
If you're alive, it isn't.

A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we’re two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we’ve found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.

Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding. Find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly. At last, the answer why. The lesson that had been so hard to find, so difficult to learn, came quick and clear and simple. The reason for problems is to overcome them. Why, that’s the very nature of man, I thought, to press past limits, to prove his freedom. It isn’t the challenge that faces us, that determines who we are and what we are becoming, but the way we meet the challenge, whether we toss a match at the wreck or work our way through it, step by step, to freedom.

That’s what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we’ve changed because of it, and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way is winning.

If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?

Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they're yours.

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I do not exist to impress the world. I exist to live
my life in a way that will make me happy.

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in
its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.

Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is
demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding
others that they know just as well as you.
You are all learners, doers, teachers.

Born in 1936 in Oak Park, Ill., son of Roland Robert and Ruth Helen (Shaw) Bach, the American Richard Bach is the great-great-great-great grand son of J.S. Bach the great composer we all know. He attended Long Beach State College (now California State University, Long Beach) in 1955.

An airplane pilot, he got married with his first wife and had six children, then divorced and left his family in part because he didn't believe in marriage. One of his children, Jonathan, wrote a book about his relation with his father he never knew, Above the Clouds. Everything concerning airplane was his field, including motion picture stunt pilot, Air Force tactical fighter pilot, an aviation technical writer and flight instructor. He even got involved as an narrator & stunt pilot in the movie Nothing by Chance, based on his book.

Though aviation was his true passion, he always wanted to write; since high school, one of his gym teachers made him realize his potential. Since 1959 he had this idea of a bird learning to pass beyond the walls of limitations, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which came through a "Cinerama on my wall." Almost all his books used airplanes as a way to pass the message. In Running From Safety, Bach shares with us his childhood: at age 8, he lost one of his brother: Bobby. From his book, we also know that he has a much older brother: Roy.

Bach met his wife, Leslie Parrish through the shooting of the movie Jonathan Livingston Seagull in 1973, based on his book. It is said that he sued the production for changing the movie without his permission. In fact, those who saw the movie noticed that his name wasn't mentioned, only the copyrights for the title Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Then they went their way, far enough from Hollywood, somewhere between 1977 and 1981. Finally, they got married in '81. Since then, Richard Bach tried what he called the closest thing to flying: paragliding. Recently Leslie and Richard got divorced.

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