You know how people say people cry on planes? Something about being anonymous and therefore uninhibited and maybe a little unhinged. Maybe that’s just me. Well…apparently, I—a fellow people—cry looking…at planes. Riddle me that.
On my trip home for the holidays this year, I took these photos and this video because I was so overcome. By what I was not sure. I just became drawn to the tall, well-lit, brightly patterned, upward-pointing tail of the plane ✈️ next to mine, and then as my plane and others lined up to taxi on the runway, I felt so much admiration, awe, and also…aww.
??
Meeee too.
On a logical level, I could trace it to how I’m a generally orderly person, and seeing the orderliness of air travel always strikes a chord in me, even though it doesn’t always feel that way for, say, a passenger whose luggage gets lost.
You might look at the date of this post and think: ah, she’s sad about going home for the holidays. Maybe the holidays are hard and emotional. Maybe there’s someone who should be home too, who isn’t. Cue sentimental holiday commercial.
None of this is wrong, but none of this is it either.
So what the hell is it I’m blathering on about then? Look, that’s what I said to myself as I did the hard work of not avoiding my feelings—hey look, personal growth!—and drafted these words. I literally did a shimmy and shake of myself to try to make myself articulate. And now I know.
I’m in a state of life now where I’m really forcing myself to ask: where should be home? I know where has been my home. But where should I settle down? Or is even that notion a myth?
And what I’ve hoped is that the answers would come to me on one of the many long-haul flights or drives this past year, some planned and some surprises. But there haven’t been any eureka moments. No answers just coming to me. So I’ve been so frustrated. I’ve done the analyzing and planning, plus overanalyzing and overplanning approaches, but they didn’t work. And now it seems this “go with the flow” thing is, well, I guess it’s flowing but to where?
But I wonder if it’s been trying to show me another point: I cannot force an insight to come when it’s convenient for me. When I can fully bask in the weight of ~what it means~. When I can…gasp…overanalyze it.
Oh. Ow. Okay. Onward. (Upward, please.)
Also published on Medium.