airplans

I'm no stranger to being alone, but I feel the loneliest when I travel solo. It’s almost ironic. I see more people in several hours than in a typical week, yet despite the sea of sojourners, I am awkwardly all alone. I desperately desire someone to do life with. Experience is all the sweeter when shared with people you care for. You can think of your own personal examples of the times when life would just not have been the same if you were by yourself. Airplanes and airports only amplify my solitude.

Often it is a romantic attitude. I want to share my journeys, my joys, my jokes—my experiences, my life, my armrest…with that one special girl. I hate when the seat beside me is empty or (God forbid!) someone I don’t know, but today it is especially bad. The boys in their business suits silently scream “I’m important” as they rush to reply before we take flight. The young lad across the aisle is adorable (as most well-behaved children are), filled with the distrait emotions of his happiest holiday and heading home. The couple beside me is exceptionally annoying (but blissfully sweet). She doesn’t have a ring…maybe we should meet, I think to myself. The cool flow of air from the port above tousles my hair, and for a moment I wish it were a soft feminine whisper and not some mechanical process. I long for a hand to hold. I want to wake Her up and tell Her how much I want to jump into the pool of cotton balls just beneath our wings, even if Her quickly closing eyes say She doesn’t care.

I’ve never been quite so disappointed with a safe landing. An hour prior I had convinced myself that a crash landing in the middle of nowhere would have been preferable. I was to be the sole survivor, perhaps sustaining a serious injury in which I would have to self-amputate a foot or begin my journey toward civilization with a broken femur, in proof of my masculinity. For then loneliness would be OK. It was unavoidable—the pilot didn't even survive, nor the ringless girl on my left. Just me and a change of socks and a shattered pelvis on my way back home. Maybe I’d even be noticed at my return, heralded as that guy who did that thing that one time. And maybe, just maybe, the Girl would look at me in the way I want Her to.

By the second leg, thoughts of a crash landing had subsided, along with the lingering longing for love found in a terminal, thanks to a distraction provided by a poorly written but entirely engaging psychology book. As we began our descent the plane creaked and moaned as a ship sinking in a storm. The turbines roared as if the pilot had shifted down four gears too many. We shook violently for what seemed like a thirty-second eternity through what I desperately hoped to be turbulence. Slowly an unrealized fear crept up into my chest and I cursed my earlier thoughts of a crash landing.

In that moment I became grateful. I felt absolutely powerless and out of control, much like I generally do when pursuing a girl. It shook me, and when all my effects had been removed from my pockets, I recognized how fortunate I am. There may be a lot of things that I don’t have that I would like, but I have a greater group of friends than I could have scripted in my wildest story. I have shared with them the life that I do have. I appreciate them for always being there in the good times and the bad. I love how they encourage me to make the most of this one life we have in this turbulent place. I love them. (I love you.)