A Life in the Sky

David Hang finally retired on a December morning. He sat alone in the quiet bedroom of his house. He watched the winter sun climb over the bare branches. He was seventy years old. His ninety-year-old mother was still alive and keen of ear. She would insist that he looked eighteen. "You swim every morning and eat an egg at breakfast," she often said. The protein in the egg, she believed, and his usual morning swim, kept his heart strong. "That is basically why you stay so young."

That routine had begun in his youth, in a small province far from any city. As a boy he had loved the woods behind his home. There he built a fence of solid wood. He loved the smell of cut wood. There he learned to swim in the cold river. He would sit in the shade of a giant oak. He would watch an aircraft pass overhead. He would let his imagination run wild. Every youth in the village dreamed of leaving. From an early age David had no intention of becoming a farmer like his father. He wanted to fly.

His father, however, was opposed to the idea. "The sky is no place for a boy," he would say. Still, he never actually delayed the decision. David's mother took his side. In the end the family reached a compromise. He could pursue a career in aviation, but only after he finished his registration at the local college. The tuition was a reasonable price to pay, she insisted. She would insist on honesty above all else. His father, a reasonable man at heart, finally agreed, unable to say no to his only son.

David proved a remarkable student. He was competitive in every sense, yet never aggressive. His teachers soon acknowledged that he had a rare gift. They closely monitored his progress. They predicted, quite accurately, that he would one day become a champion of the skies. No one was amazed when, at the age of twenty-three, he won the regional flying championship. He would later acknowledge his debt to his mother. He learned to acknowledge his own mistakes without shame. The simple act of taking off never failed to amaze him. Nor did his calm under pressure ever amaze her.

His first job was as a co-pilot for a small airline whose reputation was excellent. The aircraft was old, but the crew was devoted to their work. Every passenger felt safe and secure. David learned to monitor every instrument on the screen. He learned to check the monitor above the door before each flight. He would weigh the risks of each sudden change in the weather. He refused to let fear weigh on his judgment. He learned to behave calmly when the tension in the cabin began to rise. The old machine, too, learned to behave through every storm. A secure future, he believed, was built on such small habits.

One autumn evening, the weather forecast warned of a storm. A sudden shower turned the runway into glass. David's plane was full of passengers, and the delay in departure made everyone nervous. To ease the tension, he spoke over the intercom without delay and explained the situation. Then, in an emergency, he did what he had been trained to do. He communicated with the tower. With the assistance of his co-pilot, he landed the plane safely. The passengers let out a sigh of relief. Back at the hotel, he took a hot shower to warm up. When another emergency arose the next morning, he offered his assistance once more, as calmly as before.

That night, safe at home, David could not shake a sad thought. The airline's owner, a man he admired, had been arrested. The police were accusing him of fraud. The news said he was under arrest and under observation. The police continued to pursue the missing accountant across three provinces. "The charges are hard to predict," David told his wife. "And I have no intention of defending him if he is guilty." He washed his hands of the whole affair and went to bed. Still, he kept the man under observation in his thoughts. He remembered that a careful observation often reveals more than a quick judgment.

The scandal hurt the brand image of the airline. Passengers began to complain about late flights and cold dishes. The company was in danger of collapse, and the market grew more competitive by the day. Consequently, a giant food supplier from the south made an offer. It was a merger and acquisition that would save the jobs. David was among the first to support the deal, and he did not oppose the new owners. He understood that a company must sometimes break with tradition to survive. "A famous brand is worth keeping," he said. "A single dish, well cooked, can still be competitive in any kitchen." "The dish of the day," he added, "was never a matter of price alone."

The new owners were advocates of contemporary technology, and they did not hesitate to advocate change. They installed new computers. They built a database for every passenger. They put a tiny chip in each new aircraft. They devoted great sums to research. They learned to devote their evenings to reading the latest studies. They learned to devote a portion of each weekend to small experiments. The online registration of passengers took only a minute. The proportion of on-time flights rose. A large proportion of the staff received extra training, paid in proportion to their skill. The coverage of their network reached every province in the country. David was proud to contribute his experience to this change. He knew that every small choice can contribute to a long career.

At home, David's wife ran a small restaurant. Every guest praised her cooking, and she enjoyed a good reputation throughout the town. Her best dish was a simple plate of eggs with fresh fruit and a soup rich in iron. She would wash the vegetables in cold water. She would lock the door at closing time. She would walk home through the quiet streets. She had a fine ear for music, and the radio was always on. "Good food is a universal language," she would say. "A full plate is a nearly universal sign of a peaceful home." "The fruit of our labor," she liked to add, "is a table where everyone is welcome."

Their daughter, however, wanted nothing to do with food or flying. A keen and aggressive debater, she became an advocate for the rights of prisoners. She often visited the local jail to teach. On the board she wrote the pattern "to accuse sb of a crime". She asked each student to complete it. "Every person is a slave to their past," she told her father. "But no one should be a slave to another." David admired her determination, though he found some of her ideas crazy and her arguments hard to follow. "It is a crazy world," he would sigh, "where a father cannot understand his own daughter."

By the time David turned sixty, the airline had grown into a giant. The construction of a new terminal was underway. David watched it rise from the shade of his office window. The work was under construction for two years. Every participant in the project felt a sense of pride. They ranged from the architects to the volunteer students who served coffee. Each participant received a small certificate, and many would later volunteer to help again. "A building," David observed, "is basically an idea that has learned to stand."

He made one final contribution that year. The company needed a substitute for a retiring chief pilot. David volunteered to fill the role for one season. He did not anticipate how much the job had changed. The old conventional controls were gone, and the conventional wisdom of his youth no longer applied. They had been replaced by flexible screens and flexible cables that bent like willow branches. He revised his habits. He learned the new system. He concluded his career exactly as he had begun it: in the air, with the sun on his face.

Looking back, David acknowledged that his life had been full of indications of luck and hard work alike. Every indication pointed the same way. It was a clear indication of good fortune and patient effort. He had acquired a reputation for honesty. It was an acquisition of friends rather than wealth. He felt a sense of relief that he had never once compromised his principles. He would never compromise on the truth. He insisted, even now, that the greatest luxury was a quiet morning. It was also a warm jacket and the shade of a tree in the autumn. He had been widely acknowledged as a pioneer, and he could acknowledge his rivals with grace. When the airline offered him a directorship, he chose instead to resign from flying. He refused to resign himself to a life without purpose. His habits remained strict, and he kept a strict separation between work and rest. He loved classical music and respected the classical tradition of his craft.

To conclude, David never saw himself as remarkable. He weighed roughly ninety kilograms. He wore a plain watch on his wrist. He could not even iron his own shirt without help. Nor could he weigh the worth of his own years. Yet the theoretical dream he had imagined as a boy had become an everyday reality. The psychological comfort of a life well lived, he believed, outweighed every fancy prize and every horrible fear. A psychological study he once read had taught him the same lesson. It is a horrible thing, he thought, to live in regret. Altogether, he had flown more than eighteen thousand hours.

On his last Monday before retirement, David stood on the tarmac and watched one final plane take off. The low sun hung in the sky like a pale egg. The woods beyond the runway were golden. He felt a sudden, sharp relief, and he smiled. Some trends are hard to predict. But this one he had seen coming since he was a boy in that quiet bedroom. He was watching the sky and dreaming of flight. He kept that dream alive all his life. It had been an emotional farewell. His colleagues, whose advice had always been helpful, gathered to wish him well. His pension would be modest, but he felt rich. A random memory surfaced. It was the intervention of a kind teacher years ago. There was also the gentle intervention of his wife when he was about to quit. They had added an extension to the house, and he could never remember her telephone extension. "I have the usual dream," he said to himself, "of flying one more time."