The turbulence intensifies. The overhead luggage racks begin to rattle. “This is nominal,” I think, and I am amazed once again at how skillfully humans normalize the lives they find themselves living. It is really what explains the success of our species, our ability to absorb experience, to engulf it with our minds and accommodate it, in conditions infinitely more grievous than a bumpy flight. A couple of times a year I find myself at cruising altitude wondering what could possibly induce me to board a plane again. How do we manage to take this for granted? I wonder. But then we land and my mind turns to other things, and before we have parked at the gate, I’m ready to make my connecting flight.

There is something about Verlyn Klinkenborg.