A few years ago, my friend Johnny and I took a Cape Air flight from Boston to Augusta, Maine to visit my parents. If you haven’t flown Cape Air before, picture the plane Indiana Jones would fly in, or drug smugglers in the Amazon. Eight passengers, twin propellers, and an unpressurized cabin. When the “captain” - a guy who looked like a summer intern - started up the engine, it sounded like my lawnmower growing up. A flying minivan.
I am not usually a nervous flier, but my heart skipped a beat the first time I looked out the airport window and saw our plane sitting on the tarmac. “There is a decent chance this thing goes down,” I thought.
I let my nerves get the best of me for a few minutes, before remembering the wise words of Dale Carnegie, which I had used to get me through similar situations before: “Use the law of averages to outlaw your worries. Ask yourself: ‘What are the odds against this thing’s happening at all?’”
I looked at the map of Cape Air routes at the gate, and the list of flights taking off that day. There must be thousands of flights each year, and yet I had never heard of one going down. Maybe this trip would be the first, but in all likelihood it wouldn’t be.
“What are the odds against this thing’s happening at all?”
I got through the flight with no issues, and the fears didn’t even cross my mind on the way home. Problem solved.
For most of my adult life, that has been my move: to rationalize away my fears with the statistical improbability of them coming true. What are the chances that a terrorist strikes this spot in Manhattan, the exact second that I happen to walk by? What are the chances that humanity destroys itself, after so many years, during my lifetime? Stats create a healthy distance between myself and the bad thing that pops into my head. Problem solved.
Then this week, a retired executive at my company passed away. His death came as a complete surprise, and my first thought was to draw parallels to my own life: He was a similar age to my parents, and to my in-laws. He had a wife and kids. On the way home from work, I fixated on the possibility that I or someone I love could also die unexpectedly.
In that moment, the rationality calculator felt like the stupidest exercise in the world. Is unexpected death really that infrequent? I know many people who have lost parents, or siblings, or partners. It happens to someone - why shouldn’t it be me?
It turns out that statistical odds aren’t really a way to find peace with the possibility of death. They’re a way to trick myself into thinking I have control over my own life. And I don’t.
“Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
A few weeks ago at a baptism, the pastor said something I haven’t been able to shake. “Soon enough,” he said, “you will watch as your son goes off to preschool, gets his drivers license, and eventually leaves the house. You’ll have to trust other people to keep him safe. And in those moments, you’ll realize that your son does not belong to you. He belongs to God.”
He belongs to God.
See you next week.
Emmett
Jesus said to his apostles:
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever does not take up his cross
and follow after me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”“Whoever receives you receives me,
and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet
will receive a prophet’s reward,
and whoever receives a righteous man
because he is a righteous man
will receive a righteous man’s reward.
And whoever gives only a cup of cold water
to one of these little ones to drink
because the little one is a disciple—
amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.”
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