grafity
6th Jun 2004, 14:50
I'm just wondering what it is that makes all of us want to be a pilots so bad?
I'll reword it a bit diferent then. Is it the glamour of flying or the flying itself that people envisage when forking out £60,000 that they don't have.
I'm just trying to see what it is people want out of their careers.
Straightandlevel80kt
7th Jun 2004, 19:27
Sometimes we just can't see when we've got it good. Something to do with the grass seeming greener over the fence!
At first we believe that flying airliners is the only (flying) job to aspire to. Perhaps because airliners are in our face every day, and although we tell ourselves we don't do it for the glamour, there's always the belief that we'll end up with a great lifestyle and a career in which we can be secure and proud. There's an element of believing we have something else that few others have the chance or ability to achieve. It's great to walk into a party and say "Yes, I'm a pilot" - something to do with the heritage and nostalgia of being a pioneer aviator flying in the 20th Century.
It's addictive as an activity and as a mindset. It requires perseverance just to get selected to train, and once the brain connections are made, it becomes habit, so that we are blinkered into believing there is nothing else we could ever do, nothing else we could ever have been destined to do, and no other job we could ever be happy in. We end up competing with ourselves and feeling like we've failed ourselves if we don't try and if we don't make it.
Forking out £60K - although we don't like to admit it - could be financial blindness. Brought about by the fear we create for ourselves that if we don't do it now, and don't do it this way, we may never get the chance and will be miserable forever. It's being terrified of having to admit that we made a mistake. If we end up up to our eyeballs in debt we can always say, "Well, that's just money, it was only the cash that let me down, not my ability to fly". We can always blame the economy or the industry or the terrorists. But if we don't make it because we weren't prepared to take a gamble, there's the risk we could look back and perceive it that we didn't try. It's facing that which drives us to be blinkered to the debt.
If we borrow the cash and go for it, there can be no room for pessimism. It has to work and we have to turn every obstacle into success. It's do or die... the very stuff fighter pilots are made of!
But that's just my opinion...