It seems the more I fly, the more I fear the possibility of a death by plane crash. I see it ever more clearly. The booming groan of an engine failing mid-flight, a sudden jerk turned into weightlessness as our 80-ton death chamber plummets towards it’s fate below.

It is only a toy! A toy charged with holding the lives of too many, one that can at any point be plucked from it’s trajectory and sentenced to a fall through eternal nothingness down yonder.

And it is a game! We play at it ferociously, tinkering to find better ways, faster ways, ways that are sleeker and more clever than all of those dated, inferior ways of the past. Ways that reach the sky in their ingenuity and dance circles around those that never dared to dream big. But who is smarter now? Who more clever than the ones flailing gracelessly towards earth, returning to the place from which they leaped with so much irreverence?

I see it almost every time. In fact it is almost the same exact scene. Sometimes more vivid than others, and the finer details usually vary – like the color of the stewardess’s hair, for example (she is always beautiful), or the person who will go down in the seat next to me (she is sometimes beautiful). No, not a takeoff goes by where my mind doesn’t wander toward this dreadfully forbidden scene. Like the candy left unguarded in a far too reachable place, it is too easy.

It starts with an awe-inducing loudness, the perilous groan of an engine grinding to a halt. For one second frozen in time, all turns to a deafening quiet. Stillness pervades. Each passenger is holding their breath in disbelief. I glance over at the flight attendant for reassurance, but she is also paralyzed. One single tear drips down her horror-stricken face.

Of course, this is all in slow motion. Things like this always happen in slow motion.

A twinge strikes in my heart under the realization of what just happened. Or more accurately, perhaps, the consequences of what just happened. It is the unfortunate twinge of knowing. After this comes the sudden drop, laced with revulsive disarray. A gaping pit finds its way into my stomach.

We.

Fall.

Yet it is what follows that I approach with the utmost intrigue. It is the philosophy of all that makes us human. And not just any human, but the human that is each of us. It is the lurking inevitability that comes hand in hand with life, and how we face it when it’s time finally arrives.

In Tibetan Buddhism there is a term for this. Bar-do is the transitional state of consciousness between death and rebirth. The most common meditative practices in this sect are meant to prepare you for the very moment of death, so that we may live our best lives, yes, but also so that we are prepared spiritually when our own time has come, since little else in the way of worldly possessions will be of much help to us.

What will I think of once I reach the understanding that death, in all of its decisiveness, is here? What will I choose to feel (will I be able to choose?) once I realize it is finally time for my existence, this existence – this miserably poetic existence – to come to a close?

Will it be her? Some soothing projection sent down to escort me into whatever world lays beyond? Or will I let fear win, and cross over in a state of hell that I create just moments before I get the chance to know whether or not that’s the ticket I stamped for myself in all my years here on Earth.

No, it will be nirvana. Somehow, I will choose nirvana. I will find it in whatever insight comes with the tragedy of it all. Peace will fall over me, transporting me from this life to the next, because I will find a way to achieve mastery over my mind and my emotions and my pain and I will become one with all that is happening.

I am a Buddhist monk. I am a mountain. I am a fucking sage. There will be no attachment and nothing to hold on to, only the knowledge that I am minuscule and irrelevant and that this is the beauty of it all. It will be a revelation that falls somewhere between profound and absurd, and I will die with a smile on my face, or maybe just a smirk, knowing that in reaching this understanding, I have won. I will die a knower and a winner because that is all anyone can really ask for, is it not?

Or maybe I’ll go down holding on fast to the girl next to me. Forget for just a moment about the weightlessness, the chaos. Can’t I dream? In our last moments we will be overcome with a ferocity that can only be induced by impending doom, and connection will be our chosen vessel. And oh, how we’ll choose! We will choose because it is the one choice we’re allowed to make in the face of everything good and unknown that is being taken away from us. It will be beautiful and full of fury and passion and violence. We will laugh at death by choosing to be alive! We will kiss and grope each other the entire way down.

No – better yet, it will be the stewardess. That untouchable goddess with darkish-blonde hair pitched perfectly back into a bun, who I’ve made sustained eye contact with every time she’s walked down the aisle. She’ll be offering me a drink when the engine dies. Our only thoughts will be mutual and somewhere along the lines of fuck it, and we shall kiss with the passion of knowing that this decision will be mutual and our last, with anger over the injustice of it all.

Wait, is that my mom sitting next to me? Fuck, no! Where did my mom come from? I can’t die next to my mom, I can’t be asked to feel her guilt during this. She’ll be sighing all the way down, fretting over all of my wasted potential. “Me, I made a prosperous life with your father. But you, you’re so young. How can you be dying so young?” And I’ll feel guilty that she’s upset, and she’ll feel guilty that I’m feeling guilty, which will make me feel even worse that she has to die feeling guilty, and all of this will be underlain with the profound confusion that somewhere in this scenario, I’ve let her down.

Alone. I need to be alone. It will be just me on the plane, the captain of my own sinking ship, and I will have all the time and quiet I need to conquer this bastard called death. And because I was alone, people will know that I conquered it, this fear, this universal question that is the greatest of all the questions if only because it is the one question that will always pass by unknown.

They will think of me as valiant because I answered it before them, but also because everyone is afraid of doing it alone. The irony! He is a braver man than I, they will think. They will say something of this at my funeral.

They will also find my writings. My computer will have survived the impact of the fall, its codes cracked after months of deciphering, and my notebooks will be pulled from the gnawing flames of the wreckage. Most of it will be legible (84 percent), and of that, about 7 percent will be considered brilliant.

Fortunately, it will be the missing 16 percent – or really, the missing me – that fuels their lust for my work. They will crave the 16 percent. Like Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly, my time will have come too soon and as we know, nostalgia can lead to feverish desire. And so this 16 percent will be my saving grace. Of this overwhelming tragedy will come the befuddling paradox of greatness, as my work becomes destined for reverence through the ages…

My nightmarish dream is broken by the soft touch of a stewardess offering me a drink and a hot towel. Her hair is a darkish-blonde, tied neatly up into a bun. Our eyes meet for a second longer than they should. We smile and blush, and just as she is ready to turn, her eyes grow wide with terror. The engine has just sirened to a halt.