I was late with the recurring weekend post. It was written; I just couldn’t post it.
We flew back from Berlin on Monday where my husband attended a global company meeting and I tagged along. For all measures, it was a great trip spending the extended weekend exploring the historical city and Potsdam. Being true to the words I had just written, and seeing how chance works in a completely different context and perspective from Morgan Housel’s point of view in Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes, it had to wait.
Morgan writes, “how easy it is to underestimate rare events in a world as large as ours…even a one-in-a-billion event will become the fate of hundreds of thousands of people during your lifetime.” While the odds of dying in a plane crash of 1 in a 11 million seem low, 4.5 billion passengers flew in 2023 worldwide. Morgan even uses an example of a pilot crashing every ten thousand flights as a catastrophe and how we want to avoid catastrophic risks.
Our trust, wills, power of attorneys are all established, they just aren’t right. When I was sorting through my husband’s great aunt’s estate, I realized the accounts that need to be in our trust aren’t set up correctly to avoid probate. She had everything in order because she had been an Assistant Vice President of the Federal Reserve in Chicago and the most traveled person I have ever known. There were a lot of things we missed setting up in California. Everything is still based there. Updates need to be made. Accounts need to be changed. There is work to be done.
To me, it seemed like a bad omen, not having done all the work, to put it out there and that random one-in-a-billion misfortune actually happens. We want to avoid catastrophic risks.
It is difficult to comprehend probability and large numbers. We have a psychological need to feel like we are in control and want that certainty but eventually that morphs into limiting behaviors.
Being a financial controller is part of who I am, and it’s predicated on that sense of control and certainty. However, the reality is that it’s an illusion of control, a cognitive bias where we overestimate our ability to influence or control events, particularly those that are random or driven by chance. I still feel far more in control driving my own vehicle not having to put my complete trust in people I have never seen or met even when the odds of death are statistically much greater at 1 in 95. It becomes a control paradox. I want to be in control but if I only drive, it becomes constricting limiting my options and ironically much less safe.
That illusion of control is unequivocally challenged when we fly. We have no control over the delays, the planes, the pilots, the air traffic controllers, the crews, the weather and the nightly news relentlessly reporting every near miss. Stressful environments provoke the illusion of control.
Not long ago, my husband and I were flying from O’Hare to LAX. We dealt with high wind delays, a medical emergency delay while boarding, then-President Biden leaving Chicago delay, ready to take-off after waiting for 50 other flights ahead of us and at that very moment the pilots timed out. 12 hours later we were ready to board another plane but only to have no flight crew. We gave up and went home while my brother enjoyed Catalina Island that weekend without us. We eventually made it to Los Angeles the following Monday but only after the pilot aborted take-off due to an engine misfiring, something he had never experienced before. The flight attendant sitting across from us told us we were bad luck.
We still fly and continually learn how to deal with uncertainty, loss of control and letting go of the rare probability something catastrophic could happen. Because we have to and we make ourselves do it to get better at it. The benefits we experience are far greater.
The benefits outweigh the costs.
We want control and a choice, but we don’t always get that. Boarding our flight from JFK to Berlin, Delta used a face biometrics scan that matched to your passport information held with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection which they have done for years at ATL. There was no opting out like cookies on a website. There was no retake of the awful picture floating around insta-cyberspace in the digital photo galleries. There was no announcement, no fanfare. Delta just did it whether you liked it or not.
When we arrived back at JFK, we used the Global Entry kiosks where, again, it scanned our face instantly matching up to our passport records. There was no passport scanning, no questions to answer, no paper print-out for human review. Once you were matched, you passed by a border control agent who greeted you by name and asked if you had anything to declare. It literally took seconds.
The rewards outweigh the risk.
My husband can fly business class for international work travel. On a flight from LAX to Europe, I got stuck in a middle seat in the way back of the plane with a bunch of guys who spoke no English but talked incessantly for the entire duration of the flight. Speaking the universal language, I would point, and they would all stop talking and let me out to go to the restroom. Ever since then, I obsessively check that my chosen seat assignments are still valid.
As I was checking the Delta app for our return flights, I noticed I was being offered an upgrade using my husband’s reward points. He said to do it, so I did. The more companies want you to utilize their app, the more benefits they will offer you while using it, but you’ll have to relinquish some digital control over your privacy and how your personal information is used.
Ellen Langer first coined the term “illusion of control” back in the 1970s. We exhibit a lot of these same emotions and behaviors with the illusion of control we have over our investments. It can encourage us to make irrational decisions, leading to negative outcomes that could have been easily avoided. Or it can lead to overconfidence that our investment gains are solely due to our own expertise when in reality it could have just been luck. Unchecked illusions of control can also lead to making terrible strategic decisions. As hard as it is to relinquish control, in the long run it helps us develop adaptability and resilience in the face of unforeseen circumstances, events or even a catastrophic outcome.
In my office at home, I have a picture of lightning (I love thunderstorms.) On it is not a profound saying but a simple reminder of how little control we actually have in life. That “our lives are not determined by what happens to us, but how we react to what happens; not by what life brings to us, but the attitude we bring to life.” – attributed to Wade Boggs
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, said it first and more succinctly in one of my favorite quotes since high school, “Our life is what our thoughts make it.”
ATL Extending Facial Recognition Boarding To All International Flights | Aviation Week Network
Astonishingly, nearly nine in 10 Americans (88%) admit to a fear of flying. Fear of flying: New polling suggests 65% of respondents are more nervous in light of recent plane crashes – The Points Guy
Illusion of Control – The Decision Lab
eSIMs – I tried Saily for 7 days at 1 GB. It was very easy to set up and worked great for Google Maps, Teams, WhatsApp, email and app and web access with no WiFi needed. I did have to turn on my AT&T International plan for a day because I needed messages tied to my phone number. If you can get by with no voice or texts from your phone number, it is worth using. I used all but 192 MB of the gig and it stopped working when we were at the Berlin airport awaiting our return flight.
Featured Image – Berlin Cathedral or Berliner Dom. I didn’t even realize this was across the river from the hotel I booked in the city center. There are always unplanned, unexpected, pleasant surprises when you go someplace new. – Photographer Cary Wauters