Fear of Flying – and Dying
Sometimes it takes an outsider's perspective for us to see ourselves objectively. When my sister-in-law had been part of the family long enough to be privy to our uncensored conversations, she remarked to my brother that on occasion we were, well, kind of morbid. Morbid? Really?
We had no idea. Doesn't everyone talk about death? Apparently not. We discuss end-of-life situations, what our wills say, how we want to be buried, and death in general. I don't know if this is a bad thing – we're unlikely to ever encounter a Terri Schiavo conflict, and if we hug each other extra tight before someone leaves on a trip, I don't see a downside.
So here's the issue. Some people go through life assuming that bad things happen to other people, not them. I go through life understanding that the probability of any given bad thing happening to me is slim but that eventually some bad thing will happen. Hopefully that "bad thing" will be extreme, advanced old age.
But every time I get on a plane – every time since I was about 10 and started to understand what things like Lockerbie meant – I think about how there is a chance, however slim, however unlikely, that I may never get off. I am, in fact, terrified of flying.
You wouldn't know it to look at me...I don't appear to be a nervous flier by any means, and it's not like I sit there as the plane starts down the runway saying to my seatmates, "This could be it!" But...I think it.
Today that fear is especially acute. I'm scared, so scared, of getting on that plane to go on my trip. I'm scared of what could happen on land, too, places that I chose because I felt they were safer than the alternatives (like Egypt).
My flight home is on 9/11, from Spain. Spain that has its own secular, homegrown terrorists; Spain that knows the havoc Muslim terrorists can wreak. The plane feels pathetically vulnerable, the threat unstoppable. And I am scared.
If you're wondering, I'm still going. 9/11, 10/22, Apr. 16, 2052...it could be any day. Because I'm morbid, and pessimistic, and just watched Munich, and don't believe that a hatred that's been simmering for thousands of years is going to disappear in my lifetime...because of all that, I feel sure it will be some day. I could live in a cave, but who's to say North Korea won't drop the big one right on top of said cave?
So I'll go, and I'll have a great time. I'd just really like to come home again too.
