LET'S ROLL!

Just a few years ago that was shouted in a plane high above the state of Pennsylvania. We all know that story. The black-bearded, angry-eyed guys with box cutters defending the plane's cockpit, the passengers no longer in their seats, the impending fight for survival.

No, the passengers were no longer in their seats telling themselves this was not a hijacking, or if it was then they'd soon be landing at some airport, thinking to themselves, "We'll be hostages for a while and then negotiations will begin, and we can get out of this."

Or maybe they were self-calming with the ideas that God would protect, that everything happens for the best, and if something was to be done, let someone else do it. Or maybe they'd be throwing up, or be in tears, screaming for mercy.

At some point, though, it dawned on one person, maybe two—this was new. Not a rerun of previous hijackings. Then a stewardess talking to ground control was told that these guys wanted to take the plane down, maybe hit the White House. This was a suicide flight!

And so—let's roll! Passengers rushed the cockpit. Slashes. Punches, blood, screams.

The passengers must have been close to winning, to opening that cockpit door, because the guy in the pilot's seat nosedived the plane straight into a farmer's field in Pennsylvania.

Imagine it how we will, what we know is this: the passengers went down, fighting to the last, not sitting in their seats, not comforting themselves with vain stories.

Now where are we in this? By analogy each one of us is in our own plane, alone. And our plane only has so much gas, so much fuel. And it's going down, too. Just a matter of time. Whether it goes down in a field in Pennsylvania, or the mountains near Denver, or a California desert, the plane is going down somewhere, sometime.

Can I get that through my head? No. I can't. That I am going to die at some point... yes, intellectually I can admit that I'm going to die. But it still doesn't reach me emotionally. And anyway, well, there's always life after death. I have a soul, so only the body's going to die.

Like the passengers on that plane before they realized the situation—I tell myself stories. Do I think I'm going to land at another airport? That the plane isn't going down? Is that why I keep sitting in my seat, letting others do what needs to be done? Because look around: there are no others on this airplane. Oh, there's video conferencing, cell phones, magazines, newspapers, television, movies—all sorts of things to keep me from being lonely. But at some point I realize it's all story, interpretation...based on what?

Suddenly it really hits me—I am the only passenger on this plane. So who's flying the plane? Who's in that cockpit? Where are we headed? I get out of my seat and start up the aisle. As soon as I do the plane hits bad weather. All the lights flash. I start to feel queasy. So I sit back down, buckle up, turn on the boob tube. Surfing the channels, I discover some strange, far-out station and watch an interview with some wacko talking about everyone "being disembodied," about not really having a body. How ridiculous is that? I've got a body! What's he talking about? But suddenly I see what he's saying. Yeah, there's a body, but I don't have a conscious awareness of it.

The question recycles: Who's in the cockpit? The wacko's talked about redirecting the attention out of the head brain, amping up the body's sensation, experiencing the feet on the floor. Doing that, I finally get to the cockpit door. The closer I come, the more fear I feel. Like there's an unstated taboo about opening that door. That I'll learn something I'll have to live with, something that's either going to eat me or I'm going to eat it. Wouldn't it be better to go back, sit in the seat, turn on the boob tube, call some of my friends, go back to the galley. But the question nags me—who's flying this plane? That question's poison. The only remedy is to open the door! I yank it open—empty! The plane is flying on automatic! The whole flight is programmed. There's nobody but me.