Flying as Therapy

Unknown-1 Along with sailing, polo and race car driving, aviation can be an expensive hobby.   But I am fond of reminding detractors that by and large flying cost about as much as ongoing psychotherapy, and can be equally as effective.  Here’s how.

Piloting an airplane requires complete and thorough attention.  Sophisticated instruments eases that burden a bit, but one needs to constantly monitor them, listen attentively to the sounds of the engine, and keep vigilant eyes out for things that might go bump in the day or night.  Stuff can happen very quickly in an airplane, and a lapse of attention can be deadly.

It is the combination of complete attention and mastery of the fear that accompanies any dangerous activity that in part makes it a therapeutic experience.  But there is another element that also makes it therapeutic.

Humans are outrageously complex organisms, and the human brain functions more efficiently and effectively (at some tasks) than the most complex computers.  What makes the brain so incredible is its ability to manage so many functions in parallel.   At any moment, the human brain is processing and directing multiple complex processes, the vast majority of them outside of awareness.

Some of those processes have to do with attempts to resolve conflicts that arise in childhood and continue to play out in daily life.   These ancient conflicts, along with those that arise in the more recent course of work and family relationships, are streaming through our awareness, and can wreak havoc with our daily lives as we allow them to rear themselves when it would serve us better to direct them instead into the background.

Most people see a good psychotherapy session as one in which the client comes to believe movement has been made toward resolution of childhood conflicts.  But those conflicts are a little like a war that goes on interminably, and, recalling the famous bumper sticker from the sixties, what if they gave a war and nobody came?

That is not to say that it is a good thing to deny the existence of our conflicts, but rather to embrace them and trust in our integrity to be responsible for them and “work them through” when the time is appropriate to do so.  Stepping into a cockpit does not stop the world from turning outside; the world remains unjust, the argument with your partner still festers, but in that moment one’s job is to simply fly the airplane.

We can eliminate suffering not only through successfully resolving conflicts, but also through coming to accept those conflicts and engaging life more fully in the moment.  That is what a “healing exchange” with a therapist can do, and that is how flying, or engaging in any activity requiring complete focus and which forces one to live fully in the moment can be good therapy.

The Value of Getting Lost

imagesWhenever I set foot in a new place, my favorite thing to do is to set out walking.  Day or night, the objective is clear; walk just far enough that I feel lost, turn around and try to find my way back.   It is, after all, in the midst of feeling lost that discovery is possible.    Humans seek the comfort of familiarity, but are also novelty-seeking organisms, which is why solitary confinement is so punishing.  Traveling familiar routes, by definition, reduces the novelty in our lives.   It will certainly help us get to where we are aiming to go, but as Lao Tzu said, “If you don’t change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”

In a beautiful piece in a recent aviation magazine, Peter Garrison wrote about “The Importance of Being Lost.”   In it, he details some of the history of navigating at night and the navigation systems, or lack thereof, that attempted to prevent pilots flying at night from getting lost.

Back in the early 1920’s, when the postal service attempted to deliver mail via airplane at night, rural towns had no electricity to light them up and “airways” consisted of either bonfires set by farmers and eventually a series of electric beacons.   A lot of pilots got lost, and many of them crashed as they were often flying in near total darkness.

With the recent advent of GPS, it is nearly impossible to get lost even if you tried.  Garrison wrote beautifully that GPS “makes us at once infants and gods.  Observers and observed, we watch from on high as our icon, a digital metaphor of self-awareness, creeps across the map.  With GPS, there is no longer such a thing as ‘lost.’  Navigation, a great and noble art whose traditions stretch back into prehistory, has been replaced by a computer game… We are much better off, but we have also forfeited something: an adventurous life in which anxiety and relief alternated like the beating of a heart.”

He cites Beryl Markham, who wrote in 1942 about her fear of what the future may hold for pilots:   By then men will have forgotten how to fly; they will be passengers on machines whose conductors are carefully promoted to a familiarity with labeled buttons, and in whose minds the knowledge of the sky and the wind and the way of the weather will be as extraneous as passing fiction.

Back in the seventies, an American Airlines training pilot coined the term “children of the magenta” to refer to pilots trained in the new avionics of the time.  Computerized flight management systems, autopilots and now GPS paint a magenta line on a screen, guiding pilots to their destination, so all pilots need do to get where they want to go is simply follow the magenta line.  (By the way, you can see that prescient training session on Vimeo if you have 25 minutes to spare; just look up “children of the magenta.”)  The trainer warned that the more dependent pilots become on their sophisticated avionics, the more they are going to lose their basic “stick and rudder” skills.   This was decades before the Air France 447 flight, the Colgan crash, and possibly the Asiana crash in SFO were implicated in pilots’ degraded “hand-flying” skills.

Perhaps we are all “children of the magenta.”  We live in worlds in which the technology we use throughout the day is comprised of systems we may at best theoretically understand but could never begin to produce, even if given the materials to do so.  We have become dependent on our smart phones, our ATM machines, our computers, our cars, and even the electricity that powers nearly all of our gadgets.  I am certainly not a Luddite, and tend to be the first person on my block to play with whatever new gadget becomes available, but I do agree that sometimes there really is value in getting lost and testing our basic skills, knowledge, and imagination to find our way home. Our hearts are muscles, after all, and it is the fear that accompanies getting lost that gives them the jolt needed to kick into gear, the jolt of fear that ends in relief as we hopefully find our way home.

Flying with Understanding

Bald-eagle-wallpaper2In Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a rather silly story made into a really silly movie, Richard Bach wrote these words, which I find enchanting:

Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you.   All they show is limitations.  Look with your understanding.  Find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly.

As a child, my self-esteem, on a scale from one to ten, was well below zero.   My mother, catching me during a moment of extreme self-doubt, told me that I was capable of doing anything in life that I wanted.  Challenging her optimism, I told her snootily that I could never fly.   Undaunted, she lovingly crouched down, put her arms on my shoulders, looked me directly in the eyes, and said, “Ira, if you wanted to badly enough, you could fly.”

At first, in my confusion, I began to trust my mother less.   But there was a part of me that wanted to believe in her magical thinking.   So over the years her words, and the conviction with which they were spoken, echoed.  Eventually, I began to understand.

I knew that as a mere mortal I could never actually fly, but perhaps I could accomplish things that logic and reason (“eyes,” in Bach’s metaphor) couldn’t, if I could somehow learn how to look with my understanding.  Perhaps I could learn to not be deceived by the facts in front of me, by the obstacles that life creates, but instead to believe in my ability to understand that which transcends facts, just as my mother leapt over reality with her conviction and belief in me.

You may know the Hasidic story about the origins of the philtrum, that little indentation above the mouth and below the nose.  According to the story, when we are conceived we are given all the knowledge in the universe.   Then, at birth, God touches us right below our nose and we forget everything.  We then spend the rest of our lives trying to remember what we already know.

What we already know is our understanding, which is more than the sum of our knowledge.   It is the way we imbue knowledge with meaning and connection that transforms it into understanding.

Understanding cannot be found simply by reference to our bodily sensations, or our “feelings.”  In instrument flying we learn that our eyes and the rest of our body can deceive us.   Our brain misinterprets the signals it receives through our senses.  We must, instead, fly with all of our understanding, and have faith that even if our bodies deceive us into thinking we are flying straight and level, we choose instead to believe what our instruments tell us.  And if our instruments give us conflicting messages, we must bring our entire understanding to the cockpit—the sum of our knowledge that transcends its parts and becomes a meaningful whole.

Our eyes do deceive us.  They show us the covers of books, but not what is inside of them.  They show us facts, and facts limit us.   They bind us to the ground; they show us what is, but never what can be.  They are the stories the news media, scientists, and our best friends tell us.  When we believe them, we deceive ourselves.     It is only through looking with our understanding that we can truly see, and it is only then that we can really fly.

In the Java Sea

As I write this, there is a gentle rain falling outside the window of the Ojai Coffee Roasting Co., and halfway around the world bodies are being plucked out of the Java Sea.   It is too soon to know, but the odds are that those on the doomed Air Asia flight experienced the violent throes of a thunderstorm, with up and downdrafts moving as fast as 100 miles an hour.

Somehow, the violence of mother nature was more than the pilots or their steed could handle. Pilots are taught to avoid thunderstorms, but they often don’t. There were, in fact, at least six jets in the same vicinity as the Air Asia flight that made it home intact.   Undoubtedly, pilots who fly along routes such as the one over the Java Sea fly among storms often, and each time they get through safely reinforces their belief that they can do it again.

I had a client once who was a rock musician, and although his father was an aviation engineer, and the client himself had an encyclopedic knowledge of nearly every human-made object that traversed the sky, he never flew on them himself.  When I asked him why, he just looked at me and said, “I’m a rock musician.”  I understood that he felt jinxed, and preferred not to die the way so many musicians have died. We could, just as my client did, decide to stay closer to the ground, spending our time reading and writing in coffee shops or imagining that somehow we are safer in cars than in airplanes.

We could, but we probably won’t. We know that the chances of being injured or killed in an airplane are still relatively minuscule, that getting out of the house at all is dangerous, and that staying cocooned and perhaps watching TV will assure that our adventures will all be vicarious.

The traditional Irish blessing begins with “May the road rise up to greet you, may the wind always be at your back…”  Pilots have their version, which is simply a wish for “clear skies and tailwinds.”

The unfortunate Air Asia flight had neither, and we all grieve the loss of fellow travelers whose lives were untimely taken from those who loved them.  And, as the Irish blessing concludes, “…And until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of His hand.”

Reasons for Moving

Unknown-1Just about a year ago I wrote a blog post in which I quoted one of my favorite poems—“Keeping Things Whole,” by the Canadian-American poet Mark Strand.  I have always loved contemporary American poetry, and Strand was one of the best.  Just prior to leaving for my back-to-back trips to Mexico and Vietnam (from where I am writing this now), Strand passed away at the age of 80.  Poet Laureate and the Pulitzer prize were just two of his many honors.   I read “Keeping Things Whole” before I had any awareness of a desire to fly, but it struck a chord in me that continues to this day.   So, in honor of one of the greats, here it is again:

In a field

I am the absence

of field.

This is

always the case.

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

 

When I walk

I part the air

and always

the air moves in

to fill the spaces

where my body’s been.

 

We all have

reasons for moving.

I move

to keep things whole.

 

To Ditch is a Verb

images-3I first encountered the word “ditch” in an aviation context when studying an emergency checklist for the Cessna 150.   I didn’t have any idea what it meant to ditch an airplane; I just assumed it meant you had given up all hope and were going going down.  That’s because, most likely, the only times I had heard the word “ditch” in my youth were in relationship to something you do to a girlfriend, or the thing you dig in order to hide the people you dispatch, or the thing that carries water from the street to the ocean.

When I arrived to California in high school I heard the word again, but this time in relationship to skipping school.  At my high school, they had a thing called a “senior ditch day” when the seniors somehow found themselves on the beach instead of class.   I had never heard that word used that way before, probably because growing up in New York skipping school was not a thing one ever considered.   Missing school was something you did if and only if you were deathly ill, and even that wasn’t a great excuse.

From the emergency checklist, I quickly learned that to ditch an airplane meant to land it on water.   Unless the airplane was specifically built for that purpose, the only reason to do such a thing would be in the event of some sort of catastrophic failure; I guess not too dissimilar from the girlfriend scenario.

Like many things in aviation there are many controversies about the best way to ditch an aircraft, and even which are the best airplanes to ditch in, as if you had a choice.   People argue about whether a high wing or low wing airplane is easier to ditch, and how to best approach a series of waves.

There is relative agreement about the fact that when ditching an airplane, you want to be going as slowly as you can, although not so slowly that you stall and pitch the nose down.   I suppose you do ditch an airplane the same way you might ditch a lover; go slowly and keep your nose and head up all the way down to the splashdown.

I am somewhat embarrassed to say that in the ten years since I first learned what the word “ditching” meant in its aviation context, I never knew its origin.   If you guessed it comes from the concept of digging a ditch, perhaps for your own grave, you would be wrong and probably in need of antidepressants.  The word, it turns out, originated in the Royal Air Force.   The English Channel was colloquially known as “the ditch,” and if you couldn’t make it across and had to land in it, well of course that meant you were “ditching.”

I don’t know enough about British English to know if you can ditch school there as well, and if that means you go hang out near the channel, or if ditching a girlfriend might mean…. No, don’t think I’ll go there.

Giving Thanks

images-5I didn’t get to fly this Thanksgiving weekend, but being with my family was even more precious.  I have certainly been blessed to make it this far, to have an extraordinary family, and to have the ability to occasionally take to the sky.

I will most likely not have an opportunity to climb into my DA40 and continue my IFR training for at least a few weeks, because business travel will put me in the “back seat” of some heavy metal.   Nevertheless, I do look forward to planned trips to Mexico and Vietnam, hopefully garnering window seats if I can.

On my last commercial trip back from Mexico, I witnessed the most spectacular thunderstorms I had ever seen.  At 30,000 feet, the lightning show was occurring directly across from us.   The pilots of the Embraer 140 clearly chose not to divert, as the ailerons outside my window refused to budge the entire way.   Although it was difficult to judge distances at 30,000 feet, the airline either did not have a 20-mile safety margin from thunderstorms or the pilots decided to ignore it, as we skated along what appeared to be just a mile or two to the side of the massive string of cumulonimbus clouds that itself appeared to stretch outward infinitely.

The magnitude of nature’s constructions was thrilling, but I was also afraid that our relatively little airplane would become incapacitated.   Holding the sadness that sitting in the cabin 20 rows behind the front office meant there was no way I could have any control over the decisions being made there, I settled in for the show.

I love to fly, and although I much prefer sitting up front, I am also happy to be chauffeured, where I can relax, read some (usually flying-related) magazines, and look out the window.    Although it is by far not my favorite airline, I look forward to flights on United so I can tune in channel 9 and listen to air traffic controllers.   This time I will be on American to Mexico and Asiana to Vietnam, so there will be no ATC for me to cuddle up to.

While flying breaks no laws of physics, from the flesh and bones perspective of mere humans it feels as though we are at least bending those laws.   Like speaking Hungarian, it shouldn’t be possible, but somehow people manage to do it.

There is so much to be grateful for this Thanksgiving, and although I hope to be flying for many years to come, I am certainly grateful for all the time I have been blessed to be able to stretch the law of gravity, whether in the cockpit or in the cabin, and have such an amazing family to come home to.

Miso Aviator

imagesI’m sure every profession has its way of distinguishing the amateurs from the professionals.   In aviation, the lowest rung of the ladder is “airplane driver.”  I heard it more than once in my training, typically when I did something wrong: “You don’t want to be a driver, do you?”

The next higher level is the pilot, the one who has mastered the technical aspect of flying, the one who finally makes the shift from the two dimensional steering of the driver to the three dimensional flying of the pilot.   But there is yet another level, one reserved for the masters of flight.  These are the aviators.

They are, of course, somewhat artificial and arbitrary distinctions.  Yet, just as Justice Potter said about the difference between pornography and art, “I know it when I see it.”

The aviation writer Budd Davisson describes the difference between a mere pilot and an aviator this way:  “The difference is that an aviator is the airplane, and they move as one, while the pilot is simply manipulating the proper controls at the appropriate time and sees the airplane as a machine that he forces to do his bidding.”

I have flown with a lot of pilots, and the best pilot with whom I have ever flown was my first instructor, Floyd Jennings.  I witnessed Floyd’s flying on several occasions, but the most memorable was on my second flight as a student.   The first and only time I had ever felt nauseous in a small airplane was on that flight.

The nausea, which seemed to come from out of nowhere, was so bad that I knew I wouldn’t make it down to the ground without creating an embarrassing mess in the cockpit.  I was sweating profusely and my face was pale as I was trying to hold back.  I finally told Floyd that I couldn’t hold back any longer.  He glanced over and saw the sweat on my face and my normally pink Polish skin shift to a whiter shale of pale.

We were about halfway through the downwind leg of the pattern in Santa Paula, which means we were flying parallel to the runway, but pointed opposite to the direction needed to land.  Floyd took control of the airplane.  In what appeared to be a single movement, he looked from side to side, cut the power to idle, pointed the nose down, swooped down and around, and in a matter of mere seconds, the airplane kissed the ground sweetly and almost imperceptibly.

Whenever Floyd took control of the airplane, I had the distinct feeling that he and the metal bird were one.  Though he was a grizzled, curmudgeonly character, his flying was seamless, effortless, like wearing a comfortable shirt.   When he moved the airplane moved, when he blinked the airplane blinked.  He met Budd Davisson’s definition of aviator to a tee.   This was sadly in contrast to my flying, in which I often felt that I was wrestling with a metal beast.

I am currently working on a collection of poems I am calling “One With the Miso.”  It’s just a whimsical, silly title, but I like it because on the one hand, it sounds meaningless, but on the other hand, it expresses something bigger.   We can eat or drink the miso (that is, be a pilot), or we can become one with it.   Whatever our behavior, be it simply brushing our teeth, drinking soup or flying an airplane, we can get to the point where our sense of self as separate from the universe disappears, and the thing that we do and thing that we are becomes one.

Why Do Pilots Fly?

When flying out of busy airports throughout the country, pilots often have to wait in a queue of airplanes before moving up to the runway line. As a pilot, you sit in the cockpit, having completed all but the last few items on the pre-takeoff checklist, inch toward the runway, and wait for the tower controller to release you by calling out your airplane’s name (in my case, “One Romeo Alpha”) and uttering three magical words: clear for takeoff.

You release the brakes, key the microphone and let the controller know you were listening: “One Romeo Alpha, clear for takeoff.” Or, if you are in a particularly jovial mood, “One Romeo Alpha’s rolling.” You do the final few things on your checklist and then subvocally recite the mnemonic “lights” (all appropriate lights are on), “camera” (transponder is set, which allows you to be “seen” on radar), “action!” (all engine gauges are where they should be), you look to the sky to make sure you aren’t inadvertently rolling into an approaching airplane that the controller might have missed, cross the huge threshold marks on the runway, and line up on the centerline. The great moment has arrived. With your right foot on the rudder pedal you gently but firmly firewall the throttle. The engine wakes up, roars to its maximum, and the carriage in which you are blessed to sit rolls down the runway as you anticipate leaping off the earth in a single bound. Then, as the wings split the air unevenly, you lift off the earth, defying both the gravity of the earth and the gravity of life below.

It has been said that flying small airplanes is “hours of boredom filled with moments of terror.” But if that were all it was, none of us would ever climb up into another cockpit. There is a magic to flying not unlike the magic created by the best magicians. By craftily combining the laws of physics with the audience’s desire to believe in the impossible, magicians create awe-inspiring reactions. Indeed, awe is the feeling we get when we move into the transcendent space of doing that which by all rights should not be doable. Like magicians, pilots use their skills to do the thing that God or evolution did not grant us the natural ability to do. We don our mechanical flight suits and guide human crafted marvels of engineering to break the chains of gravity, allowing those of us fortunate enough to sit up front to see the world around us in an entirely different way.

By doing that which seems impossible, flying becomes a symbol of hope, a reminder that the obstacles in our path are only just that. It is a reminder that there are ways to break free of even the most daunting of challenges.

It is in just that spirit that I inaugurate my new blog, “Clear for Takeoff.” It will be about aviation, but I will continue to write about the things that have consumed my life and have interested me up to this point: autism, religion, writing, management, psychology and psychotherapy, photography, and whatever else moves me in the hope that it will move you too.

The “repurposing” of this blog imitates the repurposing of my life, so with the three liberating words that will be this blog’s moniker, let’s get off the ground and enjoy the limitless sky ahead of us. If you haven’t already done so, hit the “subscribe” button on the right, and join me for the ride.