We, the Flying Humanoids
“Human Beings were not made to exist at forty thousand feet in the air”
The delusions of grandeur must have lingered in the air like a foul stench every time I said that line. In total, I must have said that exact thing hundreds of times. My friends and family - bless them all - have all bravely endured the plague of my “Why Air Travel is the Worst Thing Ever” rant for years. This rant, usually punctuated by the statement above, was a famous monologue I had constructed myself in my teenage years to emphatically perform every time the opportunity arose. As someone who’s family had the means to travel by air frequently, the opportunity to go on this rant arose with regrettable frequency. Flying; the entire experience, was just such an affront to our very humanity in my eighteen-year-old mind, and everyone needed to know. Obviously, I shouldn’t judge myself too harshly. Teenagers often have far worse grand declarative statements than “flying is the worst thing ever”. However, this stupid rant about air travel goes a little deeper than I’d like to admit, and due to a more recent shift in perspective, it’s worth investigating a bit further.
Strong, declarative language and expressive emphatic moments defined my air travel rant. To be more precise, an excessive amount of these things defined my air travel rant. With hindsight, it’s obvious that the rant was not only constructed for the purpose of communication, but for entertainment. I wanted to be entertaining, a memorable jester if I couldn’t be a serious philosopher. Animated speeches are no doubt entertaining in a way, and memorable at that. However, what kind of memory was this rant encoding on it’s victims - I mean, listeners? This guy loves hating things.
Flying was easy to hate, and it was easy to point out the things I hated about it in an enthusiastic way. The air circulation, the cramped quarters, the general uncomfortability. I desired so strongly to connect with people, and I did it through this common shared disdain. My delivery and fervor in expressing my hatred for flying did - of course - make an impression. Many people would likely find an animated, feverish rant about flying hard to forget, especially if it produced a few laughs. However, once the laughs died down and the rant ceased, my audience thoroughly convinced to dislike something they already disliked, I came to notice that they were never really engaged in what I was saying. How could a person become engaged with what was really just charismatic, insecure, complaining?
Make no mistake, people would almost universally agree with my final conclusion. Flying does suck, they’d all nod in agreement. I was right that this thing that we all dislike is something that we should all dislike. However, I never convinced anyone to stop flying, which was, I can only imagine, a deep desire of mine at the time. After a number of years perfecting this rant, I came to notice that the universal agreement I received at the end of my rant was never nearly as livid as mine. Everyone would essentially just go back to whatever they were doing or talking about after my monologue had ceased. There was little more to add to the conversation after the fact. At best, I wasted everyone's time, at worst, I allowed people to burrow further into the comfort of their prejudice and passive engagement with the world. As I grew older, I realized that this way of living - fitting in by highlighting shared hatred - trapped me and my friends in a spiral of negativity.
You see, flying is fucking marvelous. In every sense of the world. It is a modern marvel that within a century people innovated means of transport so effectively that the entire globe is potentially less than a day away. More impressive still is not just the feat of engineering, but the things quick travel allows us to do. We’re able to get much-needed medicines and doctors to the places they're needed most, we’re able to transport food, supplies, and the people we love across the globe. This is the potential good that can happen when people get together and collaborate with creative vigor. Regardless, an exhaustive list of all the reasons flying is cool would no doubt be exhausting, and would miss the point. See, I’m not trying to convince anyone that flying is great, I’m trying to illustrate how putting in effort to appreciate things in life on a deeper level than our base senses can lead to a richer and happier experience. This isn’t really about flying at all. This is about learning to appreciate something that’s easy to hate, something that brings me obvious sensory discomfort. Appreciating something that ostensibly sucks takes effort, but in my experience, the effort is worth it. I certainly did not just wake up and miraculously appreciate air travel. This took a lot of thinking, writing, and mental work to cast my discomforts aside in order to find my present more enjoyable. However, I do now find my present more enjoyable, and because of this my life feels enriched in a way my eighteen year old self couldn’t dream to rant about.
Along with the wonderful effects thoughtfully engaging with the world has brought me, I’ve found that this sort of thing is contagious. When I tell my shocked loved ones and friends that I now love flying, and why, I’ve taken special care to note the difference in responses I receive. No longer does this conversation end with a passive nod of agreement. People start to engage with this way of thinking. Thoughtful engagement seems to beget thoughtful engagement. I now see people’s eyes light up as I express love for this thing that we all agree sucks. They think about their response, why they like flying, why they still dislike it, what the benefits are to other modes of transportation, and so on. The one-sided insecure monologue of complaining has now been replaced by an enthusiastic dialogue. Not only do I feel better about my world, but it seems like the conversation now, in stark contrast to shared hatred, leaves everyone better off, if only marginally so.
