(F)ear

You know when you're flying and there's a pressure drop in the airplane your ears snap shut? Normally when you forcefully yawn or swallow, you hear a pop and all's well. This time though, thanks to the flu, my ears were already partially blocked. And the plane seemed to wobble more on turbulence than actually fly for a good portion of the flight. Consequently my ears pinched shut. Like entirely. The way it drowns out noise when you put in ear drops. I saw a lot of people around me try to clear their ears and I figured it was normal because there was some major air pressure drop. But to my great panic, my ears kept shutting out every last decibel of sound. And the silence that ensued was louder than anything I'd heard. I couldn't hear S saying something beside me. Nor the baby whose wails had awoken me a few seconds earlier. Rapidly I tried yawning forcefully... swallowing a mouthful of air and trying to direct them out through my ears, gulping water. Nothing worked. I would've started hyperventilating if not for trying the last ditch effort of physically pulling down on my ears. I heard a faint pop on the left one and a gush of sound right after. After a few more minutes of agonizing just as we landed, I got the right one to pop as well. What a relief! That's the beauty about the human body. You hardly ever notice anything when its functioning well. Only when it starts to give you trouble, you give it any attention at all. Much like what we obsess over in life. We obsess over what's going wrong than appreciate everything that went right. Some food for thought, yes?