A few years ago I visited Las Vegas. I was there primarily for Steve Pavlina's first workshop ever, but I booked an entire week, with the weekend containing the actual workshop in the middle of it. Although I was fully immersed during that weekend, I put some pleasure in the mix too and took some time to thoroughly visit the city (and, of course, study the casinos and enjoy some shows). I also glued this trip with another stuff I had to do in New Zealand, so when I left Vegas, instead of flying back East, towards Europe, I continued West to New Zealand, and then West again to Bucharest.
I literally went around the world in two weeks.
The airline for the Vegas - Auckland flight was Quantas. I remember this very well because we had what we usually call "an incident".
The airplane, a Boeing 780, with the iconic "lump" in the front, had a 2 aisle cabin with 10 seats per row. I got a seat in the middle, between the two aisles and I remember I was really tired. After 1 week of Vegas, with a full weekend spent at Steve's workshop, all I wanted was sleep. And knowing the flight was about 11 hours, I was ready to indulge in a long, transoceanic nap. I put on the blanked, closed my eyes and fell asleep in like 20 seconds.
I wake up on a low murmur, interrupted every once in a while by a monotonous voice on the PA. At first, I thought it was the standard announcement that we can take out our seat belts. Well, it wasn't that. Half asleep, I perceived some sort of agitation coming from my neighbors. They were looking to the LCD screens and then to the airplane windows, which was something completely useless, since it was night for at least 4 hours. But as I became more and more awake, I started to understand: the captain was saying that we're now returning to US, because we're having a hard time navigating. It wasn't bumpy, so there wasn't a storm. Then why we had a hard time navigating?
And then I understood. "We regret to inform you that we need to come back to US, trying to land in Los Angeles, because we hit a bird with the nose of the plane. Important navigation systems are in that part of the plane, hit by the poor bird, so we return to Vegas, where you will get a free night at a hotel, on us, then a new flight in the morning.", the captain said,in the same monotonous voice.
So, we actually hit a bird.
That was something very new to me. To be honest, I didn't believe a word, and I thought it has something more sensitive going on, like losing fuel or an engine failure, and they were trying to avoid panicking.
But after we landed and I could see with my own eyes the nose of the plane from the terminal, I had to believe. As you can see in the picture, there was a hole the size of a small briefcase, right in the middle of it. Two meters to the left or two meters to the right and the bird would have hit an engine. And that would have been really bad.
We spent the night at a hotel in LA and in the morning we got another flight, which was, this time, as smooth as you can imagine.
But that hole in the nose of the plane was still with me. The fact that, at 5000 meters above the Earth, the odds of hitting something with such a small tolerance were so high, that made my mind spin for years.
Most of the time we don’t really know the real danger that’s surrounding us. We don’t know how close we are to not being anymore. And based on this lack of information we make plans and engage in a specific type of existence. Like it's a given that we're actually going to land where we set ourselves up to land. It's not. Anything can happen.
Things are impermanent. Nothing lasts for ever. Not me, not you, not this blockchain-based social media website on which I’m publishing this article. Nothing. We’re just passing by.
And that’s the beauty of it.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me 
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