I trust almost no one for basic competence in day-to-day life, but I don’t worry much about dying a fiery death when I’m on an airplane. I readily put myself in the hands of the crew, even though they’re probably a bunch of horny wiseasses judging us harshly. Let someone else be responsible of my continued breathing for awhile; I’m exhausted from the task. But writer A.L. Kennedy is, like many people, terrified of flying. From her new Aeon essay on the topic:

“I am not superstitious. Magical thinking is an open well of nonsense into which we fall at our peril, it leaves us prey to charlatans and all that is self-defeating about human psychology. I use tapping and listening to music to induce positive states as a kind of self-hypnosis, I don’t believe I’m performing magic… I don’t believe in magic… Yet as soon I get within sight of an airport I know that reality is, in some ghastly way, porous or sensitive at great heights. Some deep, irrational urging, some remnant of young hominids’ anxieties around over-tall trees, tells me that nature itself is able to feel my thoughts at any altitude from which a fall would prove fatal. The higher I get, the more clearly my conscious mind’s emanations will invite attention. It will lean close, like a startled mother bending in over a baby she suddenly realizes is not a baby, but merely a baby-shaped monster swapped for her beloved by evil elves and likely to bite her at night if she doesn’t throw the appalling thing clear out of a window right now. To be precise, the more I fill with fears, the more the universe will attend to and believe my fears, thus making them real. And down will come baby, cradle and all.”