It has been months since our last phone contact. “You know I think in black and white. As a pilot, I don’t have time to wait for the sun, stars, and moon to align: there are no coincidences in life.” My brother’s words caught me by surprise. I think in a broader palette!
The tragic event of the sudden disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 has refocused long-standing sibling issues. It is a painful metaphor for my missing brother. My brother is an expert, well-respected captain of a major airline. He is a trusted pilot, but an absent brother.
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His were the same haunting, but illuminating, words spoken earlier in the week by Les Abend, an airline pilot and commentator on CNN. “Pilots are black and white thinkers.” I had a visceral response, so I went into default mode. I googled “personality traits of airline pilots.” After forty years, the possible key to understanding our sibling issues.
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The intrigue and mystery of flight began with our parents in 1941when they spent their first date watching planes land and take off at Idlewild Airport. As the first child, the experiment, I was expected to follow the more traditional path. I became the speech and language pathologist; it was my brother who got the pilot gene.
When we were kids we shared a close and loving family. He was the athlete: the baseball player, the nose tackle, and the heavyweight wrestler. I was the reliable, cautious student who loved music. He was tough and intolerant; he perceived me as the crybaby. My brother drove his own red 442 convertible in high school; I had access to the family Falcon. He was the risk taker; I followed conventions and parental expectations and went to graduate school. He left for the Air Force to fly B52s with a shiny new sports car and a flashy watch. When he got his wings I sat in the cockpit seat in the flight simulator. To him it was home; to me it was a potential nightmare!
Articles such as The Partner of Pilot (The Candid Diary of an Airline Pilot’s Girlfriend), the Airline Pilot Forum, the personality profile, published by the Airline Pilots Association Int (ALPA), and the blog The Pilot’s Wife, Meet my Husband, were compelling. Pilots are concrete, practical, linear thinkers. They seem to have central on-off switches rather than rheostats. Things are good or bad, safe or unsafe. Adhere to regulations, but be prepared for the unexpected. Ignore emotions; stay calm and steady. Modify the environment, not behavior. Draw immediate conclusions, and make rapid and unemotional judgments about people and situations.
It was all there in black and white; meet my brother! He fits the “pilot persona…” the cars, boats, his need to be reality-based. Is it any wonder why a sister and brother with two very different cognitive and communication styles have had their challenges?
I teach people who lack social awareness how to activate their rheostats and to think in shades of grey and colors. My patients’ histories of impulsive decision-making, insensitive comments, and careless mistakes, have led to social isolation, suspensions, and dismissals from school or the workplace. Therapy involves reading social situations, prioritizing options, and making thoughtful decisions. It takes time; pilots don’t have the luxury of time.
Simon Baron-Cohen created the term Mind-blindness to describe people who have difficulty taking the perspective of others and “putting themselves into someone else’s shoes.” It feels like my brother and I have suffered from Sibling Mind-blindness all these years.
Perhaps flying on automatic pilot has prevented my brother from turning on his social radar for his sister. What I have interpreted as impatience or disinterest in our relationship may be his inability to engage his off-hours social switch. Social-cognitive dissonance: I wish I had read the signs.
Our conversation came to an abrupt close as my brother pulled into Newark to catch a flight. “Wait, do you have just one more minute?” I asked. “I need to tell you who I am. I avoid black and white, I think in colors!” My brother responded, “You mean it took all these years to figure this out?” I took a breath, shook my head, and thought it all finally makes sense. Perhaps to a degree the stars aligned for us this time, and our reconnection is no coincidence.
