This blog aims is to share the wisdom you could learn about life from the world of model aeroplanes. Plastic model aeroplanes, built from kits. The Tao of Airfix.
You may be wondering what anyone could possibly learn about life from building Airfix kits. Especially if you’re unfamiliar with model aeroplanes and their attendant belief systems.
But even if you already understand that there are profound lessons about life, it may not be so obvious what all of them are.
And just because something is obvious to us, that doesn’t mean it’s obvious to everyone else. Apparently sometimes, other people are more different from ourselves than we like to believe. (A sort of meta-lesson, if you will). And perversely, they don’t always agree with us as much as they should.
The meaning of life
Of course in this context by ‘life’ I mean Life in a sort of philosophical sense, not the biological process. There were very few lessons about respiration, metabolism or cell division. Apart from the importance of a spray mask, and maybe some factors which correlate with weight gain and poor skin tone.
So this is already complicated, and it might be useful to explore some or all of these lessons. Please be patient – we will, in due course. Including the lesson that adult life is complicated.
These lessons in life came from things like small plastic components, solvent based glue and dangerously sharp tools. For example, attempting to separate two fingers you stuck together with superglue can cause discomfort. Especially if you use a scalpel to separate them.
So model aeroplanes do teach us something about biology after all. And some of the solvent based stuff may be carcinogenic so there might even be lessons about cell division. And just wait until we get to the Visible Man, which wasn’t even a model aeroplane. Even though he nearly flew across the room a couple of times. But all that was secondary, so please don’t get distracted just yet.
There are other ways in which we can learn these lessons about life, but that’s another story. So we’ll stick to model aeroplanes (metaphorically, not like the 1/48 F/A-18 I once became physically attached to).
If we try really hard to ignore biology (for now), model aeroplanes can teach us about human nature. We learn about managing expectations, dealing with disappointment, hindsight, guilt and regret. All the things one needs to understand in order to successfully navigate adult life. Because one thing that we learn is that adult life is complicated.
There’s also a bit of economics, the nature of knowledge and information, and project management. All we need to do is look in the right places.