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Learning to Enjoy Stillness at 32,000 Feet
Plane journeys allow me to disconnect from the world and reconnect with my thoughts
“Hold my hand,” my older brother says as we ascend into the air. I look out the window, watching the tarmac rush past, wondering if the plane will actually take off.
The speed pushes me further back into my seat as we go down the runway. Then, the plane pulls up and all that pressure seems to release. There’s a surreal feeling of weightlessness as we’re suspended in the air, disconnected from the Earth completely.
I breathe a small sigh of relief. For now, I feel safe.
I plug my headphones into the in-flight entertainment screen as my brother turns to me. “Let’s watch something,” he says. “To take your mind off of everything.”
When I was younger, I was an anxious flyer.
As an American, I was used to traveling by car. More often than not, my family would pack all eight of us into the car to drive 20 hours to Florida rather than fly. So, when we did take a plane, the unusualness made my brain cycle through what-ifs and worst-case scenarios.
I would grip my mom’s or brother’s hand tightly every time the plane pushed off the ground or went to landing. And when turbulence hit, I got stressed too. Turbulence felt like going over potholes, but there was no road underneath us in the sky. I felt unsteady.
What I hated most about flying, though, was the feeling of my ears popping when there was a change in pressure. In the airport, I used to pick up a pack of candy to chew on so that my ears wouldn’t hurt as much. Still, that pain felt like a sign to my body saying, you shouldn’t be up here. You’re not supposed to be up here.
In spite of all of that anxiety, I constantly felt a wanderlust itch. For as long as I could remember, I daydreamed about trips to Paris or Rome, how I could practice my French in a boulangerie, or experience the culture in a country my ancestors came from. So, I decided, planes were just something I was going to have to get used to if I wanted to travel. I just needed to get through the journey to get to the destination.
