I was reading in Outliers about Avianca Flight 052 from Bogota to New York which crashed in 1990. ✈

☁☁☁ There was some bad weather, and the flight was put into three holding patterns, just burning fuel.

They aborted a landing and attempted a go-around.

Turns out that planes burn a lot more fuel when they're flying low than up high in the thin air.

They're holding, holding. Asking for permission to land.

It doesn't come.

At some point, the engines give out and the plane crashes. Eight of nine crew members (including all three flight crew members) and 65 of the 149 passengers on board were killed.

💀💀

The engines didn't malfunction, they just ran out of fuel.

Turns out that the biggest cause was that the pilots never used the word "emergency." Gladwell argues that it's because they were deferential to the authority of the NY traffic controllers.

I'm sitting here waiting for the US election results to roll in, and I'm unexpectedly nervous. 😬😬😬

I'm not American. I've done a pretty good job at ignoring most of the noise that comes from south of the border over the last 3.75 years. And, perhaps most importantly, I take the long view that human progress isn't linear, and that these steps may be necessary to fuel the amazing growth to come.

And despite how unexpected they are, my feelings are here. And I'm sitting with it.

Ask for what you need.

Take the space that you need.

You don't want to keep ignoring what's going on inside of you until the engines give out and you crash.

So whether you're rumbling with what's going on in the US, with an impending second wave, with an enternity of being cooped up and the loss of your normal, I want you to know that it's normal.

It's okay.

And that it too shall pass.

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Columbian flight crew ✈ and the US election