The Irony of Life or a Quid Pro Quo?

Last month I was on a trip where I stayed in a lowkey hotel near a park situated at the edge of a major airport runway. Most days, I’d go to the park and walk around the long, narrow lake there and watch the massive planes take off or land just on the other side of the fence. It was loud, but mesmerizing. It didn’t matter what you were doing, your head would snap up the instant a mammoth steel belly with ninety feet of wingspan pushed past the air above your hair.

I watched these planes as I walked circles around the lake. They were much closer to the ground than the ones that fly over my house, but my local planes offer their own excitement, albeit quieter, thankfully. The planes above my house are about to land at Dulles International Airport and have approximately five miles to touchdown. They’re quite low and sometimes you can hear their landing gear crank out of their bellies. It’s not a terribly aggressive sound, but it will knock you out of any reverie you might be in.

Beasts, magic, understanding

I used to be terrified of turbulence on a plane, but I’ve cured myself of it. For one, my uncle who spent his career as a captain with United Airlines promised me it was highly unlikely for a plane to be shaken loose from the sky by the wind. For another, I learned enough about the subject to be able to differentiate between what is true about turbulence and what is the fiction I feared. This is such a great strategy I plan to use it in the future, too.

I have a rudimentary understanding of flight, which is an overassessment of my understanding. This is what consistently allows me to look at these gigantic beasts in the sky with awe. I think they’re pure magic. How can this be? How can they get such a gargantuan, heavy object into the sky? But I know it’s all physics and energy, lift and propulsion.

It’s not magic, of course, just as turbulence is not a monster.

Letting go

My grandfather supposedly was keen to know that his family members had arrived home safely from their travels. I didn’t know this about him until the day he passed away. We were with him in the hospital as his lungs slowly drowned from the emphysema that came from the smoking he enjoyed earlier in his life.

He knew my aunt was on a trip and, we think, he was waiting to learn she had landed safely back home. We’ll never know the truth, but he gently let go of his earthly struggle shortly after we placed the phone to his ear and he heard his daughter tell him she was on the ground safely, and that it was okay for him to move on.

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if we could let go more often, and not wait for our final hours to realize life can be lived with an acceptance of the fear that buffers us. Why only accept it for a shred of time when we could accept it for a much longer stretch? It’s hard. I know this is one of our key features — fear. It keeps us alive by holding a portion of our life aground, and I can’t decide if that’s an irony or a quid pro quo.

In flight and grateful

This coming year is unknown to us, and will be until the very end when we’ll look back on it like we’re looking back on 2022 right now. By next December, we’ll be doing what we’re doing today — wondering, hoping, planning, intending. Eventually, in about six months, the 365-day span will seem like old hat, something to be taken for granted, not the big circular mystery that we see it as now.

We don’t realize it, but regardless of what we’re fearing or planning for this next year, we’re already in flight. We’ve long ago lifted off the ground, we’ve been flying this route for years and years, we’ve been weathering the turbulence, and we’ve been making good time despite our opinions to the contrary some days.

This is because we’re alive on the earth and we have this day for which to be extremely grateful. We’re so lucky, it’s dumbfounding. We’re humans, not gravel or sleet or tree bark. When I can remember this one tiny fact — that today is to be noticed and thanked, and I have the unique ability to do so — my flight seems out of this world. Rather, it seems so fully of this world I want to cry.

Sometimes I do.

Hope you're well, friends.