Flying: The Miracle We Take For Granted

There was a joke I heard the other day from this comic named Patton Oswalt. Without repeating the naughty parts, the jist of the joke was that flying is in a plane is going in the face of everything that humans were meant to do. You're essentially flying a building at 30,000 feet hoping that psychics will keep you airborne. Heck if we know what aircraft engine parts do, we just know that it keeps us up in the air.

When something has become part of our lives we tend to take it for granted. Flying is definitely one of those things. We were not, as human beings, meant to fly. We are earth dwellers. We had to invent something to put us in the air. Now we view it as more of an annoyance then a spectacle. We spend our time in the air trying to waste it with bad magazines and watered down drinks instead of thinking about how magical our journey is.

I remember in high school a teacher asked me what I thought that most astounding thing humans have ever done in our short history. I didn't have to think about it for more than two seconds: go into space. Or, more so, go into space so much it isn't a big deal anymore. What used to be a spectacle that was met with ticker tape parades and commemorative coins are now nothing more than a small blurb on the news. Oh, Discovery went up again? What else is on? The fact that we are launching a giant rocket with thousands of intricate parts seems to not impress anyone anymore. Let's not forget about the fact that we are also strapping thousands of pounds of highly explosive rocket fuel to the machine.

You can tell that we take something for granted when we view it as a negative more than a positive. We HAVE to take a plane. We HAVE to go to the airport. The fact that hundreds of people work to keep you from dying in the air and on the ground seem to not matter, it's nothing more than an inconvenience to us (especially when they lose our luggage, I'll admit that is super annoying). I guess you could make the same argument about the car, or really any complex machine. Do people not understand how much of a miracle something like a microwave is? We are cooking something with light for heaven's sake.

Of course I'm guilty of this too. I'm typing on a computer right now just trying to pound out the last few words instead of marveling at what's it's done for me. Self contained intelligence? Puff… I just made it to five hundred words…

About the Author

Kim Green is often in awe of what aircraft engine parts are capable of doing.

Author (catwomanseven). Submitted on Fri, 4 Jun 2010 Time: 5:31 PM

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