Sam was always laughing at himself, his students and most anything else that caught his eye. He said that flying is the only occupation that has such serious consequences for failure, yet is so much fun. A passion for flight is more powerful than rocket fuel. Love what you do, and you’ll do it more and you’ll do it better. Love, laugh, learn. It’s no surprise that Peter Pan — the boy who never grew old — could fly. An atmosphere of play is prevalent in all the great fighter squadrons. And it’s not just children and fighter pilots who learn best in a relaxed, supportive and fun atmosphere — adults do too.

Using your brain to fly?

‪B-52 test pilot Christin 'Sparta' Voor has some impressive qualifications; including a masters degree in AeroAstro Engineering from MIT and another masters from the US Air Force Test Pilot School in Flight Test Engineering. In an interview she explained her mindset when flying an eight-engine jet bomber as an instructor or test pilot:

You have to manage all these tasks at once and be calm, cool, and collected. You have to be happy and enjoy it so you can think. (Carr, 2020)

There’s some deep wisdom here. You have to be happy and enjoy it so you can think. I think the statement is true because it’s hard to think straight when you’re bent out of shape!

In Buddhism, one of the main perfections along the Bodhisattva path is the Perfection of Joyful Effort. In Sanskrit the original phrase is virya paramita, which has other translations as the perfection of love or energy or even zest. It’s the constant effervescent fun in the work. A book for Buddhist practioners puts it this way:

The “joy” in joyful effort is crucial. It implies, as I’ve indicated, a rising mind, a happy and easeful mind, a sense of humor, even when things aren’t going well. The word effort sounds like a task, a chore. But joyful effort is almost no effort at all. It’s effortless effort—effort without strain of pressure, just doing something for the doing of it, not for accomplishment, money, or prestige. (Fisher, 2019)

If something isn’t fun, if you don’t make it fun, then what is it? Boring? Deadly dull? Scary? Serious? It certainly will become nothing that any sane person wants to do for any lengthy amount of time. So make it fun! Force some fun into the situation by whatever means necessary. As Mary Poppins — another childhood character who could fly — said, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. Some successful airlines know this powerful truth. Herb Kelleher at Southwest Airlines is famous for good-times. He once arm-wrestled another CEO for use of an advertising slogan while smoking a cigarette and drinking shots of Wild Turkey bourbon. Fun is one of the five core values at JetBlue Airways. We can safely suppose that the original astronauts had a little fun in their shiny new Corvettes on Cocoa Beach late at night. Wally Schirra, the only astronaut who got to fly in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, once said that, “Levity is the lubricant of a crisis. We resort to jokes, pranks and good natured kidding to relive tension, stress and boredom.”

Dale A. Gardner holds up a ‘For Sale’ sign outside the Space Shuttle.

It sounds trite to say make flying fun, to make aviation a game, but actually for a concept we all think we understand pretty good ‘game’ is mighty hard to define. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein has pointed out that finding anything at all that is a common feature of all games is actually really difficult to do. Some are fun, some are not. Some involve multiple players; others do not.  Some are competitive; others are not. It really is hard to define what it is that holds the category of ‘game’ together (Wittgenstein, 1953). But we all know the difference between a game and work.

To play a game you must know the rules. Play is fun creative learning. It’s the start of taking knowledge and really getting comfortable with it. It is exploring the limits. It’s taking a skill out for a spin and seeing what fun we can have with it. Rather than boring routine work, if you have fun you take game play to the limit. Interesting stuff happens at the limits.

Putting their best faces forward, elite test pilots pose in front of the X-15.

The World Gliding Championships are only held every two years or so (the latitude in the timing is due to the latitude in the locations. Summertime soaring is at different times of the year in the Northern and Southern hemispheres). Ingo Renner won the world championship an incredible four times. In the film Running On Empty, about the 1987 contest, he said, “I just fly for fun. I fly for fun and every flight is a great deal of enjoyment. However winning is good fun in itself.” He added later, “I don’t fly against fellow contestants. I just fly for myself.”

After a lifetime spent at the limits, legends like Chuck Yeager, Bob Hoover and Bud Anderson still loved flying. I’ve seen them at air shows having an absolute blast. They lap up the fun and the passion and the love from the crowd. In an extraordinary career of almost 70 years Bob Hoover never tired of flying. He says — “if you enjoy something you’ll always be better at what you’re doing.”

I was signing copies of my aviation quotation book at the Oshkosh EAA AirVenture show in the late 1990’s next to WWII triple ace and Edwards test pilot Bud Anderson. A real honor. A young kid, maybe 20 years old, came up and asked the legendary, but aging, pilot if he still got excited when he flew. Bud looked right at him. His old eyes lit up. His cracked lips swept up to a smile. Then he yelled, “Hell Yes!”

Bud Anderson, F-104 Starfighter test pilot.

Maybe the only special thing we need is a love of flying. It will propel us through the ups and downs of training. If you have the excitement, you can keep working on all the flying skills. you’ll never stop learning and loving. Squadron Leader Ian Smith, the commanding officer of the RAF’s Battle of Britain Memorial Flight gets paid to fly Spitfires and Hurricanes and a Lancaster bomber. Before this assignment he flew the Jaguar and spent three years in the Red Arrows. His secret for getting a dream flying job? “You need passion, to be of a singular mind and have total determination.”

Sam told me an admissions interview trick used at the MIT aeroastro program. They’d talk with the applicant outside. When a plane going to/from Boston Logan airport flew overhead, if the prospective student didn’t look up, they wern’t offered a place. They just didn’t have the passion for flying thing they’d need! Simple. Smart. Fun.

David Davies was a Royal Navy pilot before becoming a test pilot. He ended up as the Chief Test Pilot of the UK’s Air Registration Board, and was intimately involved in testing new aircraft types for CAA certification — including Concorde and the B747. He wrote the classic book Handling the Big Jets: The significant differences in flying qualities between jet transport aeroplanes and piston-engined transport aeroplanes that’s still relavent for transport flying fifty years later. In its concluding chapter he wrote:

The demand of jet transport flying can best be met by enthusiasm. Personal enthusiasm for the job is beyond value because it is a built-in productive force for thouse who have it do not have to be pushed into practice and the search for knowledge. Enthusiasm thus generated its own protection. This is the frame of mind which needs to be developed for the best execution of the airline pilot’s task. (Davies, 1971)

One of my flying fun injections, getting typed in the TST-14J jet sailplane.

This idea of course works for most other activities. Dr. Curt Tribble, a leading cardio-thoracic surgeon, discussed the need for passion and fun in the operating room in an interview about surgical training:

It is such a long program, four years of university, four years of medical school, seven to ten years of formal training in cardiac of heart surgery before you are even remotely ready to be independent. You are not even ready to be a master surgeon, you are just ready to be on your own. It is such a long process that if the process is not fun, if it is not stimulating or exhilarating, then you can’t really do it. You shouldn’t do it. You won’t become your best unless the process itself is a fun thing to do. When we perform our best, especially in very difficult operations, we look forward to coming into the room together. We know we are going to be able to do that operation. We are excited, we are juiced. We get into a groove. It is a fun room to be in. That is the environment that we have to be in to do our best work. That is the environment that I demand for myself. (Tribble, 2001)

They were lots of jobs that career counselors with their personality and aptitude tests told me that I could do, but that I never pursued. Weather forecaster was one, nuclear engineer another. I just don’t have the interest or passion to enjoy doing any of those things long enough to get good at them, to make the time worthwhile. If you don’t just love the idea of being a pilot, if there is no thrill to being aloft on a magic carpet ride, if you’re not already adoring about flying in some deep private place inside; this may not be the game for you. If you want to be an airline pilot for the money or a military pilot for the glory or a private pilot for the girls — you are going to be disappointed. You may get some of what you seek, but you will not be a good pilot, and you will not really be happy.

Me, first skydive, tandem jump from 14,000 feet.

But what if you used to love flying, yet now the exciting roar of the relative wind has dimmed? We can encourage our own delight and joy, which in turn will fuel our inner fire ten-fold in return. Attend an airshow. Visit a museum full of neat airplanes. Read a book by Bach or Gann or Morgan or Saint-Exupéry. Fly a kite. Get a tailplane endoresement. Help some scouts earn their aviation badge. Teach a ground school. See an Imax space movie. Take a balloon ride. Connect again with the enchanting awe of flight. Fly a friend for the first time. You can find the passion again, water the roots and let the flower bloom.

Me, steep turns over Los Angeles in a Revo weight shift trike.

I know this works. I’ve gotten bored with flying the same plane on the same routes every week. So on my days off from being an airline captain, I’ve worked as a line-boy at a Wisconsin gliderport. I’ve flown to Puerto Rico to write a magazine article on a guy that owns the first thirty feet of an old TWA B-727 and is turning it into a huge personal flight simulator. I’ve searched and found photographs of the first airplane I flew on as an excited six-year old, resplendent in all its multi-hued 70’s glamour. I found the most exciting ride in Orlando was getting my seaplane rating at Jack Brown’s. Worked for a while as a writer on the move Living in the Age of Airplanes. Studied aeronautical engineering classes. Had fun flying hang gliders on the beach next to LAX, done a tandam paraglider flight off the Torry Pines cliffs. Got some dual instruction in little light sport trainers, a T6, and the Concorde simulator with a former British Airways check airman. Every time we do something like this, the excitement and love for flight grows stronger. As does the appreciation and knowledge and skill. I think I remember the lessons learned when I’m having fun, and in fact psychologists have experimentally determined that that we remember things more accurately that have pleasant associations (Matlin, 1979 & Bower, 1981).

Me again, about to fly the Concorde simulator.

Another way to fan the inner fires for flight is to take some pictures. Don’t be shy about taking lots and lots of photographs of the airplanes and the people. Don’t get caught up in trying to get some ‘hero’ or ‘action’ shots while flying — a camera is still the most dangerous thing in the cockpit for the undisciplined — but capture some aeronautical memories. Over time, looking at these pictures you will be as love-struck as couples looking at their wedding album.

A friend of mine is part of the pilot recruitment team at our airline. So he has reviewed a lot of logbooks and talked with a lot of pilots. One of the neatest experiences was a candidate who had taken a photo of himself standing next to every airplane type he had ever flown since he was sixteen. This photo went in the logbook. So now the logbooks he bought to the interview showed a kid next to a Cessna, then a fantastic journey into adulthood with bigger and faster airplanes. Late teens and light twins. Battered pistons of all types as a commercial pilot and flight instructor. A proud new uniform next to a small turboprop. A few extra pounds and the first jet. A few gray hairs next to a B-747. What a journey, what labour of love. His logbook should be published as a book. He got the job.

Me again, flying a reproduction 1902 Wright Glider on Kill Devil Hills.

Airline recruiters — knowing something of the long boring flights, the horrendous early mornings and other myriad dangers ahead — look for passion. It will power a pilot though the groundschool and the bad times. Did he build plastic model airplanes as a kid? Did she volunteer for the safety committee at her last airline? If you want to do this flying thing for a while, if you want to ever be good, you need to know how to enjoy it.

If you can laugh, if you are following your heart, then whatever bad things may happen, you can continue to thrive. From a long learning plateau to the worst things in the world, fun and love will get you through. Fun and love are on the inside, part of our inner game, and can be taken by no one and no thing.

We all know pilots with loads more flying hours that us. I’m at 21,000 hours and that’s low time compared to some of my airline pilot peers. However, the pilot with the most hours aloft didn’t fly for the airlines. Roger Stradley flew a Piper Super Cub over Yellowstone National Park, spotting wildlife. He logged over 65,000 hours. In 2010 Roger told AOPA Pilot magazine:

I never get bored. It’s something new, something different every day.

A couple of years later, in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle newspaper he said:

It's just really a good job. I haven't gotten rich but I sure enjoy my work.

Roger Stradley, Mr. 65,000 hours.

Adventurer Audrey Sutherland put it this way in her 1978 book Paddling My Own Canoe:

The only real antidote is inside. The only real security is not insurance or money or a job, not a house and furniture paid for, or a retirement fund, and never is it another person. It is the skill and humor and courage within, the ability to build your own fires and find your own peace.

Olympian Mary Lou Retton said “each of us has a fire in our hearts for something. It’s our goal in life to find it and keep it lit”. Someone who has kept the passion lit is well-known pilot, author and aviation podcaster Max Trescott. He could get a job making more money than he does teaching people to fly, but he loves flying down low. In 2020 he said “It's all enjoyable”.

If you keep your funny fascination for flying, if you truly believe in the rightness of being a true pilot, if you love being one with the wing, in harmony with the sky, all the work will be worth the time and energy. You will have the power the achieve greatness. As scientist George Washington Carver explained, “Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.” The wing, the wind and the mind don’t give up their secrets easily, but love them enough and you will see the inner patterns.

Me, and my son Samual, testing our wingspans against a life-size poster of the California Condor.

Research supporting the idea of passion producing excellence date back to the 1800’s, with Francis Galton investigating what he calls ‘eminent creators’. He found they were capable of performing huge amounts of highly laborious work. These high-functioning individuals were observed to be — urged by an inherent stimulus” that was seen to be the major factor in determining their success (Galton, 1869). Austrian psychiatrist, neurologist, Holocaust survivor and pilot Viktor Frankl wrote that happiness cannot be attained by waiting to be happy, but that it can come as an unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than yourself. Excellence in airmanship is a good example of such a goal.

Me, on a moving bird simulator platfom. Inside the VR headset I’m a falcon soaring over New York City.

Psychologist Dean Keith Simonton of the University of California at Davis has found the same explanation as Galton for highly productive creators: “These individuals are driven by huge motivational forces that far eclipse the impetus behind less accomplished colleagues … Geniuses cannot spend so many hours without an inherent passion for what they do” (Simonton, 1994). The lesson is clear, keep your passion for flying alive, polish your inherent stimulus, have fun. Another study looked at the differences in psychological predictors between elite and non-elite performance in Olympic athletes. It found that even at the Olympian level, the more elite performers started by being more motivated (Mahoney, 1989).

Me, fun meter at eleven in a Grob 103 sailplane.

If all this is too much of a hassle, then cockpit chores will always be boring to you and you will always be functioning well below your potential. You will be unhappy when flying. Mastering something — tennis, the piano, crosswind landings, whatever — requires spending a lot of time on the plateau of the learning curve. Which is an OK place to hang out. Really. That’s just the way it is. When a student complained about something Sam would smile and mutter “Nichi nichi kore kōnichi.” It’s a Japanese Zen proverb that translates as “every day is a beautiful day.” We should come to enjoy the plateau. We should come to relish the storms and the crosswinds. Otherwise we will get bored and go putter around at something else. Without laughter, the endless journey of mastering flight might be too boring and painful to endue. It’s part of the game. If it was easy it would be no fun.

Hindus, when they read about the creation of the universe, do not see it called the work of God but rather It is called the play of God; the Vishnu-lila (where lila means play). Hindus have the pleasure to look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance.

Sam told many students that the work of flying is so hard when you have to, yet so easy when you want to. Make your vocation your vacation he'd whisper. Don’t just do something, do it enthusiastically. Stay loose, have fun, especially considering that medical studies have shown that laughter boosts levels of endorphins (the body’s natural painkillers) and suppresses levels of epinephrine (a stress hormone). This is in your control, this is a part of the inner art. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has found that “being in control of the mind means that literally anything that happens can be a source of joy” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Ultimately, fun and love are under your control.

One thing I didn’t have to write down as it immediately stuck deep in my head when Sam said it, is the difference between magicians and pilots. Magicians see how the magic trick is done, they see the mirrors and slight of hand, and it is all more trick than magic. Pilots, even after a lifetime in the air, still experience the magic of flight. There is no trick. How exciting is that?

When we approach everyday routine flying in the spirit of magic play — that is, fully, joyfully, and primarily for its own sake — we will realize not only playful pleasure but also the best results, the most enduring success. Everyday becomes fun, as we enjoy living and flying fully. Humor lightens the load, and broadens our perspective. Life is not a race, but a joyous journey to be savored every 1,000 feet of the way. We can laugh, love and naturally lift ourselves and all we touch up into the present moment. Boy this is fun!