16 February 2003 14:07
why do guys like to drive fast? its about what you get from reflexes. the faster you drive, the faster your reflexes have to be. when you're staying alive only because your reflexes fast enough to keep you on the road, then you get an adrenaline rush...its great, living life on the edge.i have an ego. yeah, ignore the stupid thing most of the time, but it still pops up occasionally, usually when i'm not ready for it. i daydream about haveing the fastest car, the coolest apartment, the biggest baddest whatever. clinically i know that i'd hate the attention after a short while, but it'd still be nice to have it if i could shut it off when i wanted to, right? then i'd be on top, different and distinguished from the rest of milling crowd of hormone driven men (yeah, the girls are saying right now: 'distinguished by having the most hormones'). i'd be unique (just like everybody else in the world... yay for despair.com).
remember the pod race on tantooine in the phantom menace? what guy who watched that movie didn't say to himself, 'jedi reflexes my foot! if that brat kid can do it then there's no problem that i could do it.' and how about a new hope? that luke skywalker punk was irritating as all get out, because i knew with certainty that i could have nailed womp rats with one eye closed and my engine on fire, and i could have done it better than him even then.
i've played that lucasarts pod racer game. it's fast, but i got the reflexes for it (so does 95% of the gaming population in the world. a game wont sell if it's not beatable). i've seen the movie. it was a long race with tons of really cool special effects and really cheesy screenwriting. but guys still play games like that because it gives them a rush. why do you think first person shooter games are so popular? because if i can hold my gun steadier and pull my trigger sooner than the other guy, that means i'm better than him. that means that if this were the real world, he'd be dead and i'd be victorious. yippee, the excitement is killing me [5].
i love flying. people say it's dangereous, that you can get killed. yup. that's one of the reasons i love flying. pro-aviation poeple are right, flying is safe. i can go up in a little oddly shaped hunk of aluminum and be perfectly safe. safe... until i get complacent. when i get complacent, it's just a matter of time. statistically, by the time i'm 30, i'll have had at least two friends/collegues in the aviation industry who got themselves killed by getting stupid, complacent, or just skipping something on the checklist.
i'm young. i'm male. so of course i'm ten feet tall and bullet proof. i get done with a flight block, where attention to detail, precision, and safety have just been stressed, and i get out on the highway. usually i'm going 10mph over the 65 limit. the more frustrating hte flight block was, the faster i go. at 85 on a texas road (ie, huge, taking a very wide swath of land), and this particular point is a two mile straight stretch, there's not a whole lot to challenge my reflexes. but you have to wonder if the next set of headlights is a cop. adrenaline is like a sponge, it absorbs your frustration.
the contrast between airplane and car is dramatic. it's why driving is so dangerous. becasue there are people like me who have never had a family member killed by a reckless driver. i don't pay attention to the road, i drive too fast for conditions, i play with the radio, on trips i'll doze going down interstate, in cities i dodge traffic, going 15-20mph faster than anybody else. on trips i drive straight through cities. it's what keeps me awake, i drive through a city and hope i make it the three hours to the next big one before i get too sleepy. it's how i get my kicks. someday i'll get arrested or killed, but who cares? we're all living for the moment anyway.
when i was a sr in highschool, they gave us a piece of paper asking us to give a bunch of predictions about the future. they'll hand them back out at our 10yr reunion. mine says that i'll probably be dead by the time that happens. i wasn't a real happy kid then. i fully expected to get killed in a car crash, or to have done something, something unintentional, but still something that would have gotten me killed. i wanted to go to the mission field and fly planes, i wanted to fly the most dangerous assignments i could. that way i could work for God as long as i was alive, but i didn't really care to stay alive too long, i was fine with leaving early. i still wouldn't mind leaving early, remember that missionary pilot in peru that got shot down last year? that could be me in three or four years.
nothing real dramatic has changed in the last four years since that. but my values have shifted since then. i'm resigned (like paul) to the fact that in all likelyhood my use to God is here.. alive. i'm cool with that and everything, after all, he's the boss, i don't have a whole lot of choice. but i've got a much more positive outlook on life than i used to too.
but it's had an interesting twist. if God still wants me here, then he's not going to let me die anytime soon, right? so i drive fast and take a few chances, God'll keep me safe. 10ft tall and bullet proof.
his work will be shown for what it is. if what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. if it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames. (1cor3)
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