I spent last weekend in Las Vegas to attend my niece’s Little White Chapel wedding on the Strip. Frequent flier miles paid for our tickets, placing us in the far back of the plane. On the way home to Seattle, my family took the whole row on the port side of the aircraft, while I settled into the opposite aisle seat. A couple soon appeared and clambered into the seats next to mine. They had flown down for the weekend to see Billy Idol perform and were on their way back home.
I felt my seat grow a little smaller as I wedged my body and gear inside the proper confines of my aisle seat. I’ve flown in a lot of middle seats in my life. Those armrests go with the seat-bearer. Trust me on that.
The woman, dressed in sensible travel clothes, sat in the window seat and soon busied herself with a book. Her companion, fitted out in trim, athletic apparel, was personable enough upon introduction, but soon fell silent, back straight, eyes open and staring forward. Unmoving.
Before every plane trip, I make sure I bring along enough distractions to keep me occupied for the duration of the nerve-rattling tin can captivity of air travel. While I’ve flown nearly a million miles over my life, most of it shuttling between airports and corporate conference rooms, I still maintain an unshakable dread of flying. I’ve woken from nightmares of being stuck in the middle seat of a plane with nothing to read. Seriously.
In the old days, to take my mind off the jolts of turbulence, I weighted down my bag with two or three books and a couple newspapers, along with an ample supply of work projects. For this particular trip, I brought my Kindle with a newly begun 1,000-page novel, an iPad loaded with the day’s Wall Street Journal, a movie and a few episodes of a TV show I’m following, and an iPhone with 300 hours of music and a slew of games. Pair all this with noise-canceling headphones, and I carried more entertainment gear than the tiny seat back pocket could accommodate — my electronically-insulated cocoon.
While the man beside me continued his meditative trance, bugging the shit out of me, I considered my obsession with keeping busy on planes. I try to meditate every day, but I cannot imagine a two and a half hour meditation while hurtling along at 34,000 feet in intermittent turbulence. Taking a car ferry every day like I do is far more dangerous than flying, based on the data. Yet I need something at hand to occupy my mind in any confined space, especially a multi-hour strapped-in plane ride.
I thought this fellow, in his enthusiasm for seeing Billy Idol, must have forgotten to bring along reading material. You know, rushing out the door with your bags and tickets, excited for the bright lights of Vegas and to see a beloved entertainer. This can be forgiven. I think. But wait. The Airline Magazine was resting at eye level in the seat-back 11 inches from his direct line of sight. Did he ever flip through it, even as a diversion? No, he did not.
My air travel anxiety began even before I made that walk down the gangway to board my first flight. When I was seven, my mom shared a story with me about a strange feeling she had at the gate before boarding a plane to Guam when she was in her early twenties. At the last minute, she followed her instincts and decided not to board. The plane crashed with all passengers lost somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. A horrifying event. Looking back now, I don’t think this actually happened to my mom. I think she made the whole thing up after reading about something similar in the National Enquirer or watching a TV show on ESP. I can’t ask her now, but even if it wasn’t true, it instilled a healthy fear of flying in me at an impressionable age.
Then, in my teens during my short-lived boxing career, Chuck Robinson, a 17-year-old welterweight, two years my senior, made it on the Muhammad Ali Boxing Team all the way from our little small-town Washington state boxing program. He got to spar with the great one himself at Ali’s gym in Santa Monica. Chuck was an exceptional athlete, and to me and many others, a real local hero. He and 13 other amateur boxers flew to Europe in the Spring of 1980 to compete in the qualifiers for the 1980 Olympics – a dream of mine and near reality for Chuck. Somewhere over Warsaw, the aircraft suffered a catastrophic mechanical failure and spiraled out of control for 26 seconds before crashing. The muscles and tendons between wrist and forearm of most of the athletes were severed on impact, suggesting these young men were awake and gripping their seats at the time of the crash. The plane disintegrated as it plowed into the ground, killing all 87 aboard.
I think about Chuck and that awful half-minute of terror every time I fly.
As I considered my seatmate, I realize the two of us must exist on separate ends of a personality spectrum. Me, with with my gadgets sprawled on my lap as we taxied down the runway, intent on distracting myself from the potential of immediate demise; he, with his zen-like serenity, oblivious to the unnatural motion and angle as we made our ascent to the heavens, only to plummet to our deaths should one of a hundred possible mechanical failures present itself.
When the drink cart rolled through after a rough bit of turbulence, I ordered a beer, maybe my last, I reasoned. He took only water.
Near the end of the flight, I stole a glance his way, sure to find him asleep, perhaps a spot of drool pooled on his fitted microfiber shirt. But no, I saw his eyes were open and intently focused …. on nothing. I turned away, abashed. A part of me wanted to be like him, to be relaxed and calm, to be present, even during this suspended limbo of plane travel, maybe crafting a beautiful sonnet or the perfect line of code as he stared at the seat back ahead of him. Yet, at that moment I found myself hating him. His smugness and self-assuredness. His straight spine and posture. His stillness.
After the plane landed safely and people began the slow disembarkment ahead of us, we exchanged pleasantries. Welcome home, I said. You too, he said. That must have been some show, I said. He and his companion smiled and nodded. I helped take down their bags from the overhead compartment.
While we waited our turn to leave the plane, I wondered again at my nervousness of air travel. Do I need all these distractions underway, or am I obscuring an opportunity at more profound personal enlightenment to fully experience the present moment and embrace the wonderful but temporary life we have been given? Maybe this man has the right of it.
I looked around and found entire rows of people with their heads pointed down, intent on their tiny screens, catching up on what they had missed in our three-hour sojourn from tarmac to tarmac. The siren song of voicemail and text message pings filled the stale air of the plane all around me like the sounds of a pinball machine. I was not alone in this constant need for distraction.
As I followed my seatmate and his companion up the aisle, I vowed to myself: next time, I will face down my demons and experience the joy and terror of the moment even as we careen and jostle through the skies above.
Writing this from the Alaska Airlines Boardroom as I await my flight to San Francisco, I have already broken that promise. I would save a child from a burning building, but I won’t board a plane without a well-stocked iPad.
In my acceptance of these shortcomings, I tip my hat to the well-found soul in seat 34B.