Airplane Crashes and Reference Points

Almost exactly 20 years ago, on July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife Carolyn died in an airplane crash off the coast of Massachusetts. The famous son of President John F Kennedy was headed to Martha’s Vineyard for a wedding.

A safety investigation determined that Kennedy flew into hazy weather at night and experienced spatial disorientation, causing him to lose control of the airplane and crash into the ocean.

More simply stated, Kennedy flew into haze at night in which there was no horizon. In those conditions, without any reference points, even the best pilots will lose their sense of what is up and what is down. The airplane will eventually enter an unintended dive or turn that will result in a crash. Looking outside, with no reference points, any moves by the pilot to save the airplane usually end up making the situation worse.

The same thing happened to an experienced helicopter pilot over New York City last month.

The solution is to look inside the airplane and fly using the reference points provided by your instruments. The instruments will tell you how your airplane is pointed in relation to the horizon.

In flight school we used to practice these situations in simulators. After closing your eyes, the instructor puts your simulated airplane in a very awkward position, then tells you to open your eyes and get out of it.

The procedures are simple. Look at your flight instruments and figure out the key reference points: where is the horizon, where is up and where is down. Then roll your wings to parallel the horizon and pull up.

When you have good reference points, you know where you are and how to get where you’re going. When you don’t have good reference points, you get increasingly confused and the situation gets progressively worse.

With good reference points you live. Without reference points you die.

Losing reference points can be scary. Most of us have experienced it.

Ever suddenly realize that you were lost driving or hiking, with no idea of where you are?

Ever wake up after an intense dream and not know where you are?

Most people feel very unsafe and anxious until they regain some reference points and understand where they are.

The same is true of life.

It is easy to get caught up in the vortex of life chasing what everyone else is chasing because, well, everyone is chasing those things. Money. Social status. Elite colleges. High club sport rankings. The right car. The right neighborhood. Eating the right foods at the right restaurants while drinking the right wines on the cool vacations for everyone else to admire all posted on InstaFaceGramBook.

We chase those things under increasing social pressure while suffering increasing burnout until we crash. Check out the previous blog on millennial burnout.

We get caught up in the frenzy—the haze—of chasing life and find ourselves without any reference points. Without those reference points, we lose our sense of direction, and what’s up and what’s down.

We are watching people crash and die every day. There is a suicide in the United States every 12 minutes. Anxiety and depression have skyrocketed. Suicide has become the second leading cause of death for 10 year-olds.

What is the solution?

We’ve got to get back to our reference points.

We need to get our lives re-oriented in the right direction.

Through practice, we need to turn those reference points into anchor points for our lives. With solid anchor points, we can remain safe in a strong position no matter how crazy life around us gets.

We need to raise our children so that they have the best anchor points possible as early as possible in their lives.

When you have good anchor points in life, you understand where you are, where you are going and how to get there.

When times get tough and life is in chaos, you can stop, go back to your anchor points, get settled, and move forward again.