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The new fear of flying: Most people are good, but there are a few . . . By
Bryce Casselman The movie French Kiss, starring Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline, begins with Ryan's character sitting in simulator of a commercial jet airliner as she is attending a school to help her overcome her fear of flying. The techniques the school teaches her to relax are visualization (picturing a stone cottage in a beautiful field) and singing a happy mantra. These relaxation methods fail her, though, and the school is forced to refund her money. Ryan's character does finally board a plane and flies from Canada to France, motivated to win back the heart of her fiance, who has fallen for a French woman while on a business trip. In the real world, there has arisen a new kind of fear of flying that will take much more than a stone cottage and a cheery tune to suppress. Through all the destruction that came with the Sept.11 terrorist attacks, the airline industry has been one the most visibly damaged. Even with recent changes in airport security, with governmental funding to help out, and thousands of members of the National Guard helping to protect many of our nations airports, it is uncertain which companies will survive and which companies will have to hang up their wings for good. Beyond just the surface damage to the airlines, there are entire industries that rely on the airlines for their business. There are travel agents and car rental companies and the tourism destinations they all serve are all negatively affected. A woman was recently hired at the call center I work at, she was hired to answer telephones and offer technical support over the telephone. She had owned a successful, locally run travel agency that went under after business slowed following the terrorist attacks. Now as Thanksgiving has passed us by and Christmas is right around the corner, I find my little family of five preparing to travel to California for the upcoming holiday and wonder how the rest of America is going to get to Christmas and New Year's destinations. We will be driving, not for any other reason than my two oldest children have become old enough to need their own seat on the airplane and my checkbook stopped way before that this year. Mid-November, my wife and three children (one of which was a 7-week-old baby) flew to Los Angeles to visit family and take in Disneyland. We had planned the trip long before Sept. 11 and didn't think twice about whether we'd be safe. Why? Because there was something that motivated us that was far greater than the fear of another terrorist attack: hope. The explanation behind this answer is not complicated and is the same response I give my little girls when they ask me why they have to hold my hand while we walk through a parking lot or why they cannot play outside by themselves. Because most people are good, but there are some that are bad and we have to be careful. But being careful doesn't mean hiding away or being afraid of life; this only brings sadness, cynicism, and paranoia. It means taking enough steps that those who might hurt you cannot easily do it and then simply having faith that in the long run, all will still be well and happiness will ultimately be obtainable. I don't want to sound cold or unaffected by the attacks by any means. I know that the scares that were created by these events are deep and some may never heal, even over a lifetime. I know that families were torn apart, that loved ones were lost and that innocent people lost the right to simply breathe. My deepest feelings and prayers go out to those that have been left emotionally barren by these events. I do hope that we as a nation will stand together. I hope that we will continue to care, even though the smoldering images have disappeared from most of the channels of our television sets and that we will do the best we can to get back to normal life. We must do these things so that we might honor those that died by not standing in the shadows and so that more Americans will not suffer by losing their jobs. Fear is the goal of any terrorist attack. We must not fear, we cannot fear, because if we do, they win.
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