Birds and Bees do this, too

Butterflies.

A familiar flutter, deeply set, matching the flutter of probability. I know the numbers, but I can’t quite put my irrationality aside and face up the facts as I fumble for my boarding pass.

So many people have died. Too many to ignore.

Shuffling forward, shoeless, I contemplate. The TSA agents let these people pass, but they will die, like the billions before them. Security? Only for a few hours, and marginal at that.

Now, the two hours I spend waiting for this delayed flight carries about the same risk of death as the two that will follow it: being suspended 10,000 feet in the air is a negligible risk next to the unseen microbes making their way to my gut. It’s unreasonable to focus on flying as a personal existential risk, this I know. This, I also feel. Then from where do the butterflies spring?

A reminder. A reminder that we can do great things, and that one day we can defeat death, when revised culture strides forward hand-in-hand with advancing science. Impossible?

They used to think flying was impossible, too.

And yet here we are, engines thrashing defiantly against gravity with a mighty roar.

Liftoff.

Fuck yeah, Humanity.