I, Pilot

The risky business of applying for a job after death

Nov 04, 2023

This essay is my submission for the Soaring Twenties Social Club’s Symposium. The STSC is a small, exclusive online speakeasy where a dauntless band of raconteurs, writers, artists, philosophers, flaneurs, musicians, idlers, and bohemians share ideas and companionship. Each month we create something around a set theme. This month, the theme was “Risk.” Consider joining us.

Problem

You know those James Lipton style interviews that include ten questions?

Let’s zero in on two of those questions:

• What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

• If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

In fact, let’s sort of combine them and instead form this question:

• If heaven exists, what profession would you like God to grant you when you arrive at the pearly gates?

Yes, let’s for a moment imagine that you will have some type of profession in the beyond. Some type of purposeful task. And for a moment pretend this; you have absolutely no idea what that beyond is like. You can only make a wish about what profession you would like to be granted there, on the other side.

You do not know who you would be working with, or if you would ever see anyone you knew here in this current world. You do not know anything about compensation or working conditions. All you know is that you might be granted this one wish. Well, what would you wish? What would you dare desire to do in that great beyond?

Hypothesis

It came to me slowly, over the years, over the hills, across the continents.

First on a bike. The freedom to explore and go there, beyond that which was. To bike in rain while being ten and to breathe in fresh droplets that have fallen off birch trees in June. To bike home at seventeen while the sun was rising four in the morning and everything had a scent of a beginning. Or to discover that the key to the bike lock was lost and to miss out on a conversation with someone special.

Then in a car.

A month ago while driving on the 95 freeway in Southern Florida, a notorious Mad Max freeway, I had a moment of clarity. I had, of course, sensed it many times before, but in such small increments of synaptic impulses that the memory didn’t stick. I felt it when driving across the United States in the middle of the pandemic. But here on the freeway, while cars zipped by and zig zagged across lanes at a leisurely 120 miles per hour, the homeostatic balance allowed a window of insight.

This is where I belong. This is where I’m in my element. This is where I navigate into life on the edge of its wave. This is where I stand in the eye of the hurricane, moving with it forward. Sometimes (always?) with a sense of intuition. But that is not accurate. It comes from years and years of experience and the sense of joy it brings. To pilot a craft.

Evidence

Let’s inspect some of the most formative (at the age I watched them) TV-shows and movies I saw and see if they have something in common.

Battlestar Galactica: The Viper launch. The first exposure I had to sci-fi and it remains the most powerful TV experience I have ever had. Those viper launches. Study them. The exhilaration!

Planet of the Apes: The crash landing. I think I watched this in 5th grade. The mind-blowing idea of crashing into something unknown that still looks known. Traveling fast in space into the unknown.

Knight Rider: Intro. That car though! I think we all still dream of a KITT car.

Back to the Future: DeLorean scene. Talk about driving on the edge of the wave and into the future!

Alien: Mission information. You’re on a mission into the unknown and there is always a twist. Always.

Thelma & Louise: The ending. So many hate the ending. At the time the young teenage me watched the movie, she adored the ending. It was a perfect ending. Grown up me would not choose that ending, but this was a movie. And it still is a good movie ending.

A Matter of Life and Death: The airplane sequence. This begins to lean back toward the original question: “If heaven exists, what profession would you like God to grant you when you arrive at the pearly gates?”

Interstellar: The cornfield chase. If you love this scene as much as I do, then you sort of understand what I mean with all this stuff in this post. We’re trying to chase something, right? Sometimes we catch it, sometimes we don’t. But we’re pretty dang good at it, this piloting thing. It’s what we do best, or even what we must do. We don’t really have a say in this matter because the matter is what drives us.

We navigate through it, through the cornfield, through the dangers, despite the dangers — toward what bring us — joy? The idea of chasing fast into the future while having control over the direction — is that what it is?

Conclusion

If given the chance in some future beyond — I’ll apply to be the pilot of a spaceship.

Cabinet of Curiosities

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