The airplane code goes like this:

• When you get into trouble, you will be given help;
• That help will pop out of nowhere (actually in drops down from the overhead bulkhead):
• Everyone will be helped in a similar manner;
• There will be utter confusion – but take your own help first;
• Once you are OK, then you are permitted to see if your travelling companions need your help.

Conventional advice is to ask for help when we think we need it. This is what prayer is all about… ask for help and you will get it (but only if you have been good).

It always surprises me that I have managed to get to the ripe old age of 56. There have been many times during those 56 years when situations reached critical points and I was thinking that perhaps the end was near – much like the pilot telling you that the plane was going down.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that it is no fluke that there is always help at hand to keep me going. I gave up asking for help a long time ago – simply because I know that when I get into trouble, I will be given help (whether I like it or not!).

So, this is the first line of the airplane code – help is on its way, whether you have asked for it or not.

The second line of the code is to do with selfishness.

Helping others seems all the rage. Your local MP pledges their help. Priests will help you get to the next life. Your doctor will help you get fit and healthy. Your bank will help you with your money. The TV will help you keep up with the times. The used car salesman will help you get the best car. And our government will help re-settle the boat people.

Even the ‘self help’ industry is more about gurus selling their help to helpless people – rather than people just helping themselves.

Drill down to any form of offered help, and you will find that the giver is secretly just helping themselves (but won’t admit to it). The problem is that selfishness has been made up to be such a bad thing – that it has to operate ‘undercover’

Selfishness is in fact a natural thing and it should be embraced for its role in fuelling the journey through life. That is why you should grab hold of that oxygen mask that drops out of the bulkhead and put it onto your own nose first. You have to look after number 1 before trying to save the world.

Line two of the airplane code simply means that YOU are the world. Without you – you have no world.