Several years ago, when flying in a Cessna 150 over the mountains between Fillmore and the great Central Valley, I lost power.   The little Continental 100 horsepower engine became a 100 mousepower engine.   I began to panic as the beautiful mountains beneath me rose up to greet me.   I tried applying carburetor heat, knowing that doing so might make things worse at first, melting the carb ice that would then suck into the engine as water, but that would eventually turn things around for the better.  But it did nothing.    I tried playing with the mixture control; perhaps I was too lean, but when I adjusted the mixture things just got worse.

I remembered something in the classic 1944 aviation text by Wolfgang Langewiesche called “Stick and Rudder.”  He said early on in the book (thankfully, because I rarely get beyond “early on” in many books) that there is practically no problem one could have when flying that couldn’t be solved by doing one simple thing: putting the nose down.   So I lowered the nose, right toward the mountain, and sure enough, the little engine that could became the little engine that did and it perked right back up.

By pointing the nose down, regaining power, and then lifting the nose until the engine almost quit, and then repeating this roller coaster procedure while looking for a good place to land (there were none), I finally made it over Gorman pass; there I saw the beautiful, flat Central Valley in front of me.   (Ever since then, I have loved the flatness of that valley.   To me, it is one gargantuan runway.)   Once I decreased my altitude over the Central Valley, the little Cessna no longer gasped for air, and all went smoothly for the rest of the trip.  (I chose to go around the mountains on my way home!)

Pointing the nose toward the ground at a time when the ground is the thing you fear the most is a great lesson in life.   If we are willing to learn, it teaches us to use our fears to do what is sometimes counter-intuitive.    The former test pilot and world renowned aerobatic performer Bob Hoover, now in his nineties, has said, “If you’re faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible.”

It is, perhaps, another way of saying “it ain’t over til it’s over.”  But it is also good advice because often, doing the thing we think is natural to do is not the best way to handle a situation.

When I suffered from severe migraines as a child, I realized that anything I did past a certain point to avoid or prevent the migraine was not only useless, but tended to worsen the pain.   Pain tells us to pay attention to it.  It says that there is something wrong that needs to be fixed.  Yet if we do what seems natural and fight it, it sometimes doubles down on us.  I had to fly right through it.

I am reminded of one of my favorite book titles (and one of my favorite books!):  “The situation is hopeless, but not serious.”   It doesn’t matter what the crash looks like:  a family conflict, a devastating business loss, a letter from the IRS.  Sometimes our enemies come to our rescue, a hole appears in the clouds, or a tree limb breaks our fall.  The important thing is to keep flying.