Flying Above My Airplane
What can a man think of during a two and a half hour flight?
Have you ever been sitting in your small not-so-comfortable seat in an airplane, wishing those hours you’re about to be sitting on it, flew by as fast as possible? I think most of us have been in that situation.
A few weeks ago, I went on a trip to Cuba with a couple of friends of mine. We were to celebrate the bachelor party of one of them who is getting married in March. Don`t worry, this is not another hangover movie-like text of unhinged pleasures and drunken reminicences. I promise.
The Takeoff
I decided it was going to be an entertainmentless flight, to call it somehow. That means I would never look up to the screens that unfolded as soon as the plane stabilizes. I would also not play any game on my iphone or read the in-flight mall magazine and make a stupid wishlist in my mind. This time, I took out a book I had bough a couple months back on Amazon titled: “The Unbearable Lightness Of Being” by Czech writer Milan Kundera, and started reading it.
35 Thousand Feet Above Ground
I thought it was going to be another flight where I would fall asleep just about finishing the preface of the book. But this was not the case. I got hooked up with the authors words and stories, and couldn’t stop thinking how related I felt to Tomas, one of the main characters in it. I started thinking about faithfulness. About how love can be transitory, but eternall at the same time. How gods were created to feed us with hope of greatness. How us men are obsessed with apocalypse as an exhaust valve to stand out amongst the crowd. How we can use flights to reflect on our actions and our meaning as beings, pretty much. Yes, my mind was flying higher than the plane I was sitting in.
I am glad I had a small notebook in my messenger bag. I took it out and started writing down every idea that came into my mind, fueled by the words I was reading in the book at the same time. I kept thinking how we are all about emotions. How we can sometimes be so weak to rule our life based on what we feel and not what we cold-bloodedly -should- think. I believe I was thinking about people I had spoken to lately. Or could I be reflecting on what I should and shouldn’t do with my own life? Then I was struck with the already-chewed idea that there is no objective moment. One single event is divided into billions of events, that each one of us lives subjectively. Nobody who has thought of this, could have seen it the way I did, even if they reached similar conclusions. Yes, this is quite obvious, but that’s part of the issue. We never take time to reflect on obvious things that happen to us. We are accostumbed to them, so we take them for granted and let them ride along our sides as ghosts.
I even wondered what the other people, who were sitting in the same plane as I was, were thinking about. I streched a bit and glanced by the plane: The man behind me had his iphone/ipod headphones plugged in his ears (I must admit that was my case as well. The difference was that he had no read in his hands). The guy next to me was trying to fall asleep -also hooked to his ipod,- but he couldn’t find a comfortable sitting position to succumb into his own boringness, which made him look desperate to get off that plane as soon as it would touch ground. A lady, a few rows behind me, kept playing on her tablet and a few others I could spot were trying to get a rest by watching what was playing on the screens -And I must remark it wasn’t content ‘on demand’, but pre-selected movies and shows. Something that makes you feel you’re being dragged back to the 90's.- I sat back on my seat and got comfortable again.
Two and a half hours in the sky isn’t a long flight, but it’s a pretty long time to leave your mind in what I call ‘a neutral state of loneliness’. On the one hand, you plug in your iphone and play your already worn out playist over and over. Music serves as a passive resistance to reality. It changes it. You can decide what emotions you would want to trigger in a specific situation, and you sometimes manage to do so. That is the magic of understanding music not as an escape to petty moments, but as a tool to enhance your reality.
On the other hand, you watch the screens. You become numb to prying into your deep-worthy thoughts which hold your fears and burdens. You don’t realise you are mising out on a pleasure that not only increases your awareness about who you are, but that can be a completely joyfull and passionate one: I am talking about the hassle of thinking about yourself and who you are.
Snack & Drink Break
Locked on the book I was gaining ground on, Thomas had already been through a whirl of emotions and situations he could’ve avoided, but decided not to. I wasn’t writing anything. I was sipping on a Jack and Coke I had picked when offered the airline’s complimentary drink by the kind stuardess. I kept reading without being bothered by alternate thoughts nor by anybody else, for I was sitting alone in a three-seat row.
The Landing
A chime sounds and the captain`s voice can be heard in the plane’s PSA system. “We are starting the descent and we will be landing shortly.” The moment when we can’t avoid fear has arrived. We are told to switch our seats back to an upright position and to pretty much cease doing whatever we were doing to focus solely on the landing. It resembles a slap on the face. I felt like they were telling me to focus on the last moments of my life. I took my notebook back out, and stared at it. I had so much to say, but couldn’t find the words to express it.
While the plane surfs through the clouds, you can feel the turbulence. Most of us think, whoa, this plane could crash at any moment. Others don’t mind it at all. But most importantly, each one of us is experiencing it in a different way. Even if the plane would crash, we would all die in different ways, but under a same context. I was obviously thinking about death, and had to write down my rambling thoughts. I guess my creativity and paranoia got mixed like coke and vodka and started to kick in heavily while the plane kept lowering fromt he clouds. It sounds intense, but it was only happening in my mind. We passed the clouds, and felt only a few slight shakes.
It turned out to be a very entertaining flight, which felt different than the previous ones I had taken, where I used to watch a movie, play on my phone, read magazines or just sleep. Time flew by faster than I thought it would. I got hooked on a book I was meaning to read for quite some time, and it felt good. We landed safely. Gladly, the plane did not crash, nor was it close to ever hitting the ground in pieces. I turned my iphone off and grabbed my stuff. We were waiting for the door to open to start our adventure in Cuba.
