The Airplane Theory

One thing that has always fascinated me are the thoughts that come to mind when I’m on an airplane looking down at the cities and the plains or on the ground looking up at an airplane. While both of these scenarios provoke similar thoughts, they are different. Each possesses its own unique texture. I believe these scenarios are representative of where we are and where we are going.

A few months ago, while I was at work, something happened that happens all the time: a plane about 5 minutes after takeoff from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport caught my eye as it plunged into the white clouds and out of view. Without realizing it, I immediately stopped what I was doing and just stared as the gears of my mind began to churn. The sight of a plane going to some destination that was unknown to me made me think of where I have been, where I am, and where I am going. But it also made me think of the people on board that plane. Who were they, what are their stories, and where are are they going?

As I currently sit on board an eastbound New Jersey Transit train, I am surrounded by people. I will be surrounded by millions more once I arrive in Manhattan, New York, yet we don’t usually look at the people we are (literally) close to. We don’t concern ourselves with the lives of strangers whom we just catch walking past us out of the corners of our eyes. When I look up at a plane however, my head is filled with questions, predictions, and thoughts. From the ground a plane seems miniscule. Its windows the size of buttons and its wings as long as twigs. How crazy something as simple as perspective can be. Chances are, there are over two-hundred people, souls, human lives on board that plane. Each with a different story, each with different pains and triumphs, but all with the same destination. At least for now.

In his poem “The Hollow Men,” T.S. Elliot writes,

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

It seems as if every now and then, when we look straight into someone’s eyes, we see what they’ve seen, feel what they’ve felt, and live what they’ve lived. Looking up at a plane is just a front for this. When you think about it, it makes you think that while some people on that plane may have had a very different past and very different plans going forward, there are also people on that plane that have lived a life similar to yours with goals and ambitions similar to yours. It makes you think that you’re not alone in what you’re trying to do. Most importantly, you realize that what you’re doing has been done before in some capacity.

Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

-Steve Jobs

 

Now flip the tables. You’re on the plane coming from some place and going to another. The terrain below appears to be sectioned into quadrants. Buildings that are hundreds of feet tall look as though they barely escape the ground of the planet which now seems so distant. Finally, if you’re still in take-off or approach, you see the cars. What a few hours ago were heavy pieces of forged metal moving at top speeds are now comparable to those little red bugs you’ve seen crawling around your back patio.

Now you are going somewhere. But the people down there? They are there. Wherever it is you are flying over, the inhabitants of that land below are in their place. Their lives are happening. They’re going to work, doing homework, watching TV, showering, & sleeping. They’re also worrying, caring, fearing, hating, and loving. For those people, today is just another day. And for that moment, that individual moment, they aren’t going anywhere. You are.

Yes, there are three letters on your boarding pass abbreviating your destination. You know where you’re headed. I, however, posit that you’re not completely sure where you’re going.  I’m sitting on the plane and I look out of the window at the ground, the sky, and the world, and I can only think about how everything I’ve done and everything I’ve worked for is so that I can finally get to that destination. That place I have in my head that I see myself at. But this puzzle that we call life has variables. Things change. Random twists of our fates happen all the time. So who really knows where we’re going?

 

 

After all, we’re only human.

 

 

 

Tom Fusillo