The Black Box of Love

Earlier this week David Warren, inventor of the "Black Box" flight data recorder passed away at the age of 85 in a Melbourne nursing home. While flight data recorders of various forms had existed from the earliest days of aviation, Mr. Warren's contribution was to develop a device to record both voice and instrument data. The recorder was contained in a robust, fire resistant box, designed to survive a crash and painted red or orange to make it easier to find at a crash site. Its impossible to say how many lives have been saved over the years by safety improvements resulting from the insights gleaned from recovered flight data recorders.

An article announcing his death and outlining his life's work described various improvements which had been made to the device over the years. Early devices recorded a handful of parameters such as height, speed, time and vertical acceleration. While this was important information regarding what had happened, it did little to explain why. Later devices recorded more detail about matters such as the position of various controls and actions taking in the lead up to a catastrophe. In other words, they provided an insight into why things had happened. Current developments involve the continuous transmission of data from an aircraft to a remote site on the ground, holding out the possibility that in the future, engineers could monitor a flight in real time, responding quickly to an event that might trigger an accident and perhaps anticipating and preventing potential problems.

For some reason I began to think about what our lives would be like if we had access to a device that recorded, in precise detail, the events and actions that lead up to accidents and catastrophe's can blight our relationships. Rather than having to rely on the shattered remains of our and other's hearts, piecing together our previous lives, through hurt prejudiced eyes, what if we were able to reread our own actions and those with whom our lives intertwine in precise, objective, detail? What insights would we glean from being able to follow the trail of our actions , moment by moment , but knowing the outcome of loves various accidents?

The wincing moments of recognition of acts and omissions whose future impacts we failed to appreciate would undoubtedly be a new source of pain for those dealing with a crisis in their lives. I'd like to imagine though, that knowledge, at least as to the facts, would leave less room for rancorous debates based on flawed recollections and the rewriting of history by the heart broken, the jealous and the guilty, and more time for reflection and maybe insight into the avoidance of future heartbreak.

While we have our letters and diaries, texts and emails and countless other traces of our lives, loves and interactions, they can be surprisingly limited in the insight they provide when read later , with different eyes and in different times to when they were created. Perhaps though the biggest challenge facing the would be inventor of the "Black Box of Love" would be our own reluctance to open the day glo bright casket in the heart of our fractured lives and face the truth within.