Long haul flights

Long-haul flights are a curiosity of the modern age. In a time when we're generally over-stimulated, bombarded with media, communications, and distractions every minute of the day, being forced to confront our own sweet selves for upwards of eight hours at a stretch is somewhat of a terrifying anomaly. The fact that it is the only feasible means of long-distance personal travel is the only reason we’re willing to put up with it.

What’s more, we do everything we can to just get it over with. People try their best to sleep through it, or else cram back-to-back movies to pass the time in the least obtrusive way possible. That’s not a criticism; it’s a generally unpleasant environment to be trapped for that length of time, and people will do whatever they need to make it through. It struck me on this trip more than others, though, just how far apart it stands from every other moment of our regular lives. Maybe I’m worse at this than others, but suddenly finding yourself cut off from the ever-flowing stream of information that runs past our finger tips day and night is surprisingly jolting.

This is quite possibly a good thing—I’m not trying to say that being cut off from the internet or live TV for more than a few hours is some crisis of the modern age (it’s something I increasingly relish as a time to read, and occasionally, when there’s space, write). It does, however, throw the incessant nature of our lives (okay, I’m generalising—my life, at least) into sharp relief.

I try hard to cram a great deal of ‘stuff’ into my day-to-day life, and regard time when I’m not, in a broadly identifiable sense, doing something to be partly wasted. While it can be great, I am starting to find this somewhat unhealthy. I beat myself up excessively about downtime which is probably needed and don’t always set aside enough time to just be thinking. 

Long flights represent the best and worst of this—I variably see it as time to be filled as productively as possible (and subsequently curse myself for the amount of time that I could have spent reading, for instance, even though I felt like crap and sleeping was a better idea), or I allow myself that room to breathe. Each flight tends to have one character, though.

You may find all this deeply disinteresting, or, alternatively, intriguingly revealing of a character flaw. It doesn’t really matter. This was written to fill some time on a flight.