Weirdo offers mortality acceptance

I once met an intriguing friend of my brother’s whom I really got to know through our… I once met an intriguing friend of my brother’s whom I really got to know through our long-distance telephone calls. Initially, he seemed normal enough, but this is my life we’re talking about, so of course he turned out to be a nut.

While we were on the phone one evening, he disclosed to me his biggest secret – when he meets someone, he has a vision of the way that person is going to die. He went on to provide evidence, citing that at the age of four he had predicted his aunt’s diagnosis of cancer and subsequent death, and a friend’s death in a violent car crash as a teenager. Creepy.

Instantly, I asked the foolish question of whether or not he knew how I was going to die. Of course, he did, but he makes it a rule of thumb not to tell anyone how his or her end will come. Did I really want to know anyway? He said that he could see his own death, but it changed each time he entered into a new relationship. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. I stopped talking to him after that. Do I have crazy-people pheromones, or what?

I have to admit, although I can’t say that I necessarily believed in the wacko’s “gift,” he comes to mind on occasion when I ponder my mortality. In fact, I insisted on going to Fuel ‘ Fuddle for sweet potato cheesecake the night before I flew to Florida for spring break, just in case it was my last meal before perishing in a fiery plane crash.

Until very recently, I was terrified and certain that this very scenario would be my end. I was one of those passengers who actually sat up and paid attention when the flight attendant demonstrated where the exits were, how to put the oxygen mask on your face and how to use your seat cushion as a flotation device. If we hit the slightest bit of turbulence, I would clutch the armrests and close my eyes, attempting to coax my heart out of the pit of my stomach and back into my chest.

I’ve even checked into the prevalence of this debilitating fear. Wikipedia provides a list of famous people who suffer(ed) from aviophobia, or the fear of flying. Believe it or not, it didn’t make me feel any better knowing that Doris Day, the Dalai Lama and R. Kelly also feared the confines of airplanes.

When I flew to and from Florida this past week, I tried to turn the stress of traveling into a relaxing session of people watching. It was amazing how many people appeared to have aviophobia in some form or another.

On my flight from Dallas to Fort Walton Beach, a college-age man in front of me actually asked the elderly woman in front of him if he could have one of her Xanax because he “gets jittery before flights. She gave him an extra-strength Tylenol. He tapped on the window the entire flight.

When I flew back to Dallas on my way home, a tall, broad-shouldered man who resembled a linebacker was sitting with me. Right before takeoff, he jumped out of his seat and asked if he could move to the exit row in the middle of the plane. I suppose the glow of the bright red sign by his head gave him some reassurance that, in the event of a crash, he could be the first out, leaving the women and children to fend for themselves. I laid across the seats and slept the entire flight.

For some reason, something clicked in me this time around. It was as though someone hit the “off” switch on my flying fear. Cliche as it may be, perhaps it happened when I turned to the new date on my desk calendar the morning I was flying out.

The quote simply read, “Don’t be afraid that your life will end. Be afraid that it will never begin.”

Call it sane, call it morbid, but I came to terms with the fact that someday, somehow, I’m going to die. When it’s my time to go, ready or not, here I come.

Even when we hit some serious turbulence on our descent into Pittsburgh, the woman in front of me who screamed each time the plane dipped merely brought an amused smile to my face. This newfound freedom from the ideal of my immortality has – no pun intended – given me a new lease on life.

Imagine how much people miss out on experiencing when they allow fear to overshadow the fun. Isn’t it more important to enjoy the ride instead of life’s inevitable destination?

So who needs to live in fear? Live in the here and now and make it worth it when the time comes.

E-mail Jessica at jrp32@pitt.edu