Eject That Emotional Baggage

On March 20th, 1990, a Lufthansa flight took off from Frankfurt en route to Paris. Immediately after takeoff, the plane hit some turbulence and the left wing dropped slightly - a pretty normal occurrence, and no reason for concern. The pilot moved his sidestick, directing the plane to shift back to the right. And that’s when things started to go haywire.

Deep inside the aircraft, two pins had been accidentally crossed, reversing the polarity of the pilot’s controls. Unbeknownst to the two men charged with flying the aircraft, the pilot’s controls were accidentally rigged: turning left would shift the plane right, and turning right would shift the plane left.

The Airbus A320 unexpectedly dipped even further to the left. Perturbed, the pilot shifted his sidestick even further to the right, which should have instantly corrected the listing ship. But instead of righting itself the plane banked even further, teetering at a 21 degree angle. The left wing veered dangerously close to the earth.

Thinking quickly, the co-pilot guessed that the pilot’s controls were compromised. Switching his own controls to override, the co-pilot leveled off the plane. Both pilots breathed a sigh of relief.  And not a moment too soon - a later report found that the left wing of the plane came within two feet of crashing into the ground.  

I first read about this story as a child (in the Reader’s Digest, if memory serves). It fascinated me. I thought about what it would take for a pilot to realize that his controls were not only compromised, but reversed? If the pilot had had more time, would he have been able to figure out what had gone wrong, and been able to right the plane? Would he have been able to turn left in order to go right?

Turning left to go right!? What a concept to wrap your head around. And yet in this situation, it was exactly correct.

I’ve been writing lately about honesty, and what it takes to be able to talk about things we’re ashamed of. It takes courage, of course, and choosing a person who we hope we can trust. It takes willingness to take a healthy risk.

But it also takes a bit of faith that our wires are crossed.

At the beginning, when we’re learning to be open and share our shame, we may think that talking about this stuff is a terrible idea. People will judge, they won’t understand, and we’ll end up feeling worse than we do now (a terrifying prospect!). And that’s why every fiber of our being tells us, “Do NOT tell your secrets! This is a really bad idea!”

That is exactly when we need to trust the process and “act as if” we know what we’re doing. We find someone who is loving and accepting, and we talk about our pain and our shame. We share our worst, deepest, darkest sides with another human being. We do what is entirely illogical and unintuitive. We turn right to go left.

And, miraculously, we start to feel better.