This week I have completed my third week back at work and with it 11 flights! And it’s only January…
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| The safest mode of transport! |
As many of you would
know, part of my job is travelling. I spend a lot of my time on airplanes and
on average I have boarded 120 flights every year. That is a lot of flights and
many hours in the air. It is also known that flying is the safest mode of
transport, in other words you are more likely to be involved in a car incident
than to die on an airplane crash.
I guess this is true if you, like many people, take only two to four
flights a year for your annual vacation or business trips. But when you are on
a plane on average four times a week, I guess the odds are higher!
However, I’m a great
believer that if it is your time to go, it’s your time to go and it doesn’t
matter how many flights you take, it only takes one to take your life away. So
even though the odds increase by taking 120 flights, you could be a person who
never travels, gets on a plane and this is the flight where something goes
wrong. It’s a bit like the lottery, it doesn’t matter how many tickets you buy,
you will win with just one, but of course your odds increase slightly by buying
more than one! So when I get on a plane I don’t thinking if this is the one
which may come down (thought I do buy a lottery ticket thinking this will be
the one! J) otherwise I would never flight anywhere and
would not be able to do my job, meet great people and be privileged to have
seen some amazing places!
We should never live
our lives in fear of what may happen; otherwise we will never get anything
done, visit anywhere or accomplish anything! I have been thinking about this
all week as I discussed various similar topics with people. I am an absolute fan
of KFC and I enjoy eating it in different countries I visit. Talking to a group
of people this week, one person mentioned how they would never eat it. When I
asked why they said they had heard a story about someone who once found a rat
instead of chicken and so she was taking no chances! I’m sure you all know this
famous story which happened some years ago, a cooked rat served as a piece of
chicken with fires! Now, if the person tells me they don’t eat it because they
are vegetarian or find it too unhealthy, and then I understand. But not to eat
it just in case another rat gets jumps into the fryer seems to me a little bit
like not getting on a plane because you’ve seen a crash! I think there are some
very good respectable KFCs and in all my years of eating it I’ve not yet had a
rat! You can’t live your life in fear that it may happen to you as it stops you
form doing things….
This is why we don’t
give into terrorism, that is their objective, and we must not live our lives in
fear. After September the 11th people continued to get on a plane; the
attacks this month on the Charlie Hebdo magazine were done to spread a message
of fear, a warning that if you speak your mind, if you exercise your freedom of
speech you could be killed. The magazine went ahead and published another
controversial cartoon sending a message that you cannot let fear rule the
world.
If there are bombings
in a city people stop travelling for fear of their lives, if there are riots in
a town people stop going out for fear of what may happen, if you hear in the
news the gloom outlook of the economy people stop spending for fear of what the
future may be. And so on, if you get burgled you sleep with the light on, if
you have an accident you stop driving, if you get mugged you stop going out, if
we get rejected or someone breaks your hard, we stop loving, the list is
endless with reasons why we should not do things, for fear to our lives, but we
must never let this rule and stops us from doing what we want to do!
I know some times it’s
easier said than done, but at the end of the day it is our choice and I respect
that. However, I do encourage you to think about what it takes to say “you know
what, I’m going to take the risk, the rewards a far better than the odds
against it”
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