Airport Musings

My flight out of Medford is "delayed indefinitely" so I'm re-booked onto a more complicated plan: Medford to Portland, Portland to Seattle, Seattle to Phoenix. I still get in around 6 pm, so it works for me. Someone standing behind me trying to re-book flights was commenting that they could just drive. I looked at my watch and started counting on my fingers. Yep,  could've driven. Side note: my spell checker says "could've" is not a word and I'm too tired to figure that one out. Could have? But could does not look like a word to me. Anyway.

So while getting my flights re-booked, someone radios to the lady helping me that another plane is delayed due to iPad technical stuff. I asked the lady if I heard that right. Are you kidding me? I'm about to go on a rant about technology, even as I'm using a notebook laptop in an airport to write this.

The more technologically advanced something is, the more opportunities for failure. I was discussing phones with a co-worker last week and commenting on how I keep hearing people with SmartPhones saying "my phone was dead" or "my phone died". Not that smart then are they? I told him I never have that issue with my phone. He replied "That's because your phone doesn't do anything". Well, it makes phone calls, which is way more than a dead SmartPhone will do. The battery on that thing lasts forever, and if it's getting low you have at least a 2-3 day lead time in which to find a way to charge it.

An issue with an iPad is causing the delay to Seattle, which isn't my flight but it irritated me slightly anyway. Maybe it was because I hadn't had breakfast yet. Planes flew fine before iPads came along, why on earth would you install one of those things in and rely on it to be able to fly? Technology is crippling us people!

I did, however, get a $12 voucher for breakfast for my troubles which is awesome because I needed to get breakfast anyway...and I sat waiting for my breakfast while reading my Kindle...so I know, I'm guilty of the technology thing too. But at least if my Kindle dies it's not going to cause flight delays.

So I read a really great quote on my Kindle this morning that I also wanted to share. I've been making my way through "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin de Becker. It talks about survival signals and intuition that keep us safe, how to listen to that intuition and also how not to be paranoid. After covering an entire book of sources of violence in our lives, he ends with a discussion about how our survival signal of fear is different from anxiety and phobias. He ends with a great conclusion:

"Though the world is a dangerous place, it is also a safe place. You and I have survived some extraordinary risks, particularly given that every day we move in, around, and through powerful machines that could kill us without missing a cylinder: jet planes, subways, busses, escalators, elevators, motorcycles, cars-conveyances that carry few of us to injury but most of us to the destinations we have in mind. We are surrounded by toxic chemicals, and our homes are hooked up to explosive gasses and lethal currents of electricity. Most frightening of all, we live among armed and often angry countrymen. Taken together, these things make every day a high-stakes obstacle course our ancestors would shudder at, but the fact is we are usually delivered through it. Still, rather than be amazed at the wonder of it all, millions of people are actually looking for things to worry about."

Put that way, it does make me marvel at it. I have phobias and anxiety about things. I don't want to call it fear anymore because as the book points out, fear is a very specific emotion that arises out of a need to survive. In a car accident for example, you feel fear just as it starts to happen. When someone puts a gun to your head, that's fear. Fear is not walking to your car in a dark lot thinking someone might pop out an kill you. That's anxiety. Fear is not thinking a friend who didn't return your text must have been in an accident, that's worry. These are things we make up in our own heads. I'm not saying these things can't happen, because they certainly do, but they aren't happening or they haven't happened yet. This is what I'm very guilty of. I assume the worst and have anxiety about things the could happen to me.... but that haven't or may never happen to me, or isn't happening now.

Gavin points out that we can be aware of our surroundings and learn to listen to survival instincts, but that we must also not put anxieties and worry in our head because they can block out survival signals from real dangers. It's a very good book and I highly recommend it.

Now I'm off to over-caffeinate myself.