What Was I Saying?
Some additional thoughts along the lines of my previous post, Everybody Tuck Your Pants Into Your Socks:
I'm afraid of flying. Not cripplingly so; I have boarded many planes throughout my phobia's duration, but they do horrify me at a gut level. I understand the chances are so remote it's ridiculous, but the extent of the terror I would feel in plummeting from the sky towards my crushing death, and my inability to stop thinking about it on the plane and before the flight (starting when I buy the ticket), compete with my confidence that the chances are infinitessimal. I am the only person I know who, when asked whether I would rather die in a plane wreck or be eaten by a shark, has to think about it.
I can't sleep on flights, no matter how long (I think my longest has been nine hours) - this is for two reasons: that I rarely fall asleep in chairs at all, and that my heart races every time the pilot so much as tilts the plane a degree. I hate more than anything slowing down when we're not yet near our destination. I intellectually know the plane must maintain speed to stay aloft, yet after not accelerating for two hours or so you lose track of the fact that you're moving at 500 miles per hour, so slowing down makes me anticipate the plane going into a nosedive. I also just have no idea why a plane needs to slow down at all, other than to land; I imagine it's in order to barely escape clipping another plane and sending everybody, of course, to a screaming death. Maybe if I were told some other reasons I could undergo some serious self-improvement.
But so anyway, what was I saying? The lesson I learned from the trials and tribulations of Grimey and Salieri help me to get on the plane. Spineless maggot that I am, I admit I do pray a little before flights, but they're always of the okay God, if you can hear me, I'm ready to come home if it's time, but I sincerely hope it's not time kind of thing, as opposed to the get me out of this and I'll go to church and not fall asleep kind of thing. But exposing my last post as utter hypocrasy nonetheless.
But what helps at least as much as praying is my confidence that God will not, in fact, interfere with the flight. I am happier to roll the dice than to make any kind of bargains with God or Fate or anybody. I feel the latter would be much more risky. I would have to be righteous, instead of just statistically non-freakish. So I imagine that it is just better to believe the only powers in play are the natural, objective, physical laws of the universe. I don't imagine there really are mystical things afoot in the world, because before a trip to Europe in 2000-01 I saw the mother of all omens.
I can't seem to write a post without talking about football. It's August, after all. But on December 29th, 2000, I watched the Texas Longhorns play the Oregon Ducks in the Holiday Bowl. My trans-Atlantic flight was to leave the next day, and those are particularly scary, for the prospect of drowning in a saltwater-filled airplane is even scarier than exploding against a mountain (and, let's face it, far less romantic). So my mind was full of crazy things, including the thought, it's okay - the chances of the plane crashing are lower than those of the 'Horns running back a kickoff for a touchdown. Much lower, in fact, but both seemed impossibly slim, for I was well aware that the Longhorns had not run back a kickoff for a touchdown since about 1978. I think that was the longest active streak in college football at the time. Within about thirty minutes I was on the verge of soiling myself. Victor Ike crashed into the endzone.
Of course it was because I had that thought that I was worried; crazy streaks come to their ends all the time. But my having envisioned it, in all its long-shottedness, made me seriously reconsider getting on the plane. But I did get on, partially under the conviction that my not getting on would make my vengeful God even vengefuller: John, you're such a weinerface that you actually let your futile mind think you could predict the future? You were going to have a great time in Europe, but now, next time you do get on a plane, I'll teach you to practice divination. . . .
But I ramble; here's my point: if ever there were a time for an actual omen to come and actually foretell the actual future, with such clarity as for me to actually act on it, it would have been then. But what I have come to believe is that stuff just happens on Earth, and if you look too much for patterns and warnings, you will find them. If you start believing there is a supernatural force that affects your life based on what you do (or based on whatever), you can convince yourself it's going on. But it has been my experience that this just isn't the case. Mind-blowing, I know. Next post will be more erotic, I promise. Dick, pussy, you name it.
I'm afraid of flying. Not cripplingly so; I have boarded many planes throughout my phobia's duration, but they do horrify me at a gut level. I understand the chances are so remote it's ridiculous, but the extent of the terror I would feel in plummeting from the sky towards my crushing death, and my inability to stop thinking about it on the plane and before the flight (starting when I buy the ticket), compete with my confidence that the chances are infinitessimal. I am the only person I know who, when asked whether I would rather die in a plane wreck or be eaten by a shark, has to think about it.
I can't sleep on flights, no matter how long (I think my longest has been nine hours) - this is for two reasons: that I rarely fall asleep in chairs at all, and that my heart races every time the pilot so much as tilts the plane a degree. I hate more than anything slowing down when we're not yet near our destination. I intellectually know the plane must maintain speed to stay aloft, yet after not accelerating for two hours or so you lose track of the fact that you're moving at 500 miles per hour, so slowing down makes me anticipate the plane going into a nosedive. I also just have no idea why a plane needs to slow down at all, other than to land; I imagine it's in order to barely escape clipping another plane and sending everybody, of course, to a screaming death. Maybe if I were told some other reasons I could undergo some serious self-improvement.
But so anyway, what was I saying? The lesson I learned from the trials and tribulations of Grimey and Salieri help me to get on the plane. Spineless maggot that I am, I admit I do pray a little before flights, but they're always of the okay God, if you can hear me, I'm ready to come home if it's time, but I sincerely hope it's not time kind of thing, as opposed to the get me out of this and I'll go to church and not fall asleep kind of thing. But exposing my last post as utter hypocrasy nonetheless.
But what helps at least as much as praying is my confidence that God will not, in fact, interfere with the flight. I am happier to roll the dice than to make any kind of bargains with God or Fate or anybody. I feel the latter would be much more risky. I would have to be righteous, instead of just statistically non-freakish. So I imagine that it is just better to believe the only powers in play are the natural, objective, physical laws of the universe. I don't imagine there really are mystical things afoot in the world, because before a trip to Europe in 2000-01 I saw the mother of all omens.
I can't seem to write a post without talking about football. It's August, after all. But on December 29th, 2000, I watched the Texas Longhorns play the Oregon Ducks in the Holiday Bowl. My trans-Atlantic flight was to leave the next day, and those are particularly scary, for the prospect of drowning in a saltwater-filled airplane is even scarier than exploding against a mountain (and, let's face it, far less romantic). So my mind was full of crazy things, including the thought, it's okay - the chances of the plane crashing are lower than those of the 'Horns running back a kickoff for a touchdown. Much lower, in fact, but both seemed impossibly slim, for I was well aware that the Longhorns had not run back a kickoff for a touchdown since about 1978. I think that was the longest active streak in college football at the time. Within about thirty minutes I was on the verge of soiling myself. Victor Ike crashed into the endzone.
Of course it was because I had that thought that I was worried; crazy streaks come to their ends all the time. But my having envisioned it, in all its long-shottedness, made me seriously reconsider getting on the plane. But I did get on, partially under the conviction that my not getting on would make my vengeful God even vengefuller: John, you're such a weinerface that you actually let your futile mind think you could predict the future? You were going to have a great time in Europe, but now, next time you do get on a plane, I'll teach you to practice divination. . . .
But I ramble; here's my point: if ever there were a time for an actual omen to come and actually foretell the actual future, with such clarity as for me to actually act on it, it would have been then. But what I have come to believe is that stuff just happens on Earth, and if you look too much for patterns and warnings, you will find them. If you start believing there is a supernatural force that affects your life based on what you do (or based on whatever), you can convince yourself it's going on. But it has been my experience that this just isn't the case. Mind-blowing, I know. Next post will be more erotic, I promise. Dick, pussy, you name it.
posted by john at
11:27 AM
1 Comments:
People with OCD have experiences like yours with the football game and the plane. All the time in fact. They're quite crippled by the notion that every time they stumble on a pattern they have to behave in exactly the right way in order for the events of History to go forth in their favor.
If you have seen the movie Pi, then you know that our universe is so complex that anywhere you look for a pattern you will eventually find it.
That certainly isn't proof that there is no God or that there is nothing magical in the universe, but I agree with a point that you touch on which is that what happens to us externally in this plane of existence, no matter how seemingly painful or unfair, is irrelevant in the context of the next plane of existence. That's the only logical explanation, other than God 'working in mysterious ways.' So following that, the thing that really matters is some internal state.
The typical Christian take would be that the only thing that matters is that you truly believe in Jesus because the afterlife is so awesome in Heaven and so horrid in Hell that whatever happens here in this world is trivial.
But I suggest you read the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It has an alternative take on dealing with the afterlife and the aspects of reincarnation.
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