Julie Anderson
Jul 28, 2017 · 4 min read

Falling in love with humanity at 35,000 feet: While flying over Greenland in July, I remembered a little story I wrote on my old phone a few years ago about the last time I fell in love with humanity. It is stuck in an ancient version of the Notes app, I think, inside of an iPhone from 2013, so old it has a wide tooth plug, stored in a closet somewhere.


I can’t remember all of the story, but it rolled into my brain like a big loud jet landing on a wet tarmac while I was stuck in a long security line at SFO, frustratingly almost too late for a flight home.

I remember feeling my anxiety rising while voluntarily allowing myself to be herded through ropes that made the line seem organized, and shorter, with 400 other people who just wanted to get on a plane to go somewhere else. It was just after a terrorist attack at an airport, and it makes me cry a little now that I can’t remember which attack, at which airport. It makes me cry that cities and countries and lives are shattered daily and I can’t remember the details.

But I do remember, standing in that deceivingly short/long line, that I had a choice: I could stay stuck and wound up in my anxiety and frustration, or I could let it go. I chose the letting go and let the beauty of the people I was voluntarily trapped with wash over me.

The people were young, old, multicolored and international. Together we chose to smile at laughing babies and appreciate little old ladies. We were patient with the befuddled who had to take off coats, shoes jackets, belts and earrings, in that weird ritual of publicly disrobing just to get into a plane with hundreds of strangers to get home. We were choosing to be kind and gentle with each other. I remember thinking that somehow, being kind was a way to say fuck you to the terrorists. I’m not sure it’s true, but it helped me lower my heart rate and start breathing again.

I remember peace washing over me and appreciating my obvious good fortune to be in that line in the first place. I am a free American woman born in 1965 who went to college. I have an interesting job at a large tech company that pays way above the median income. I was flying home from a trip my company paid for. I am incredibly lucky, no matter how I got there.

I know the American narrative reminds us to say we can make our own luck, we can make our life into what we want by hard work and determination, overcoming obstacles and editing out hard stuff if we have to do so we can move forward, but when you start out with a good roll of the dice, life is easier. When you have coats and shoes and belts to take off and put through an x-ray machine so you can get onto an airplane that magically takes you up to 35,000 feet to get home in an afternoon, you are starting with a very high level of luck.

When you choose to fall in love with humanity, life is a little more beautiful.

My trip to Europe last week was a gift that I appreciate in words I can’t quite articulate yet. There were times that I was so overwhelmed by the beauty of nature and they way people have built cities and art around it that all I could do was say “wow” and take lots of pictures to somehow capture what I was feeling so I could remember it later.

I took this picture of the ocean meeting the clouds over Iceland because I couldn’t help it. Humans had nothing to do with creating the spectacular views of nature I saw from my window seat. But we mastered the art of making airplanes and cameras inside phones to capture it.

But even my new IPhone 6 couldn’t adequately capture the intricate patterns of ice cracks over Greenland. It did a stunning job of showing the shine of the sun on the melting icebergs, however.

I remember thinking about life and death then, as I wondered how much the earth will change in the next 100, 200 years. What will humanity be like then? Will I know? Can I come back and float in and out of time and space after I die? Will I still be in love with humanity then? Will I still feel so lucky?

I found some vintage Bake-light dice for my kids at the flea market in Berlin. My daughter’s friend, who is new to our tribe, asked why dice?

I’m not sure, I said. I just fell in love with them a little when I saw them so I bought ten. It seems like everyone should have a good pair of dice.

Julie Anderson

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