Thoughts from an Airplane

I'm on an airplane right now, listening to a podcast about being on an airplane. It's called "What it's like to fly when you're fat," and it's making me uncomfortable.

It's making me uncomfortable to listen to overweight people tell stories of how they cope with making others feel uncomfortable—sheerly by the fact of their very existence—anh time they board a plane.

I'm uncomfortable because I'm convicted of such judgment of not just my overweight fellow travelers, but pretty much any of my fellow travelers.

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The airport and the airplane have got to be among the most common places where we assume the worst of our fellow humans. Consequently, we all end up self-fulfilling that prophecy by often being our worst selves.

A few uncharitable thoughts you might also have thunk while enjoying the miracle of flying the friendly skies:

Let's try to board as quickly as possible so that we can claim an overhead bin spot before these other chumps.

Please don't let that person be next to me on the flight.

Please, please, please let me have an empty seat next to me. An empty row would be a true blessing from the Lord.

The person in front of me dared to recline. Do they even have a soul?

The person next to me smells terrible/hogs the armrest/needs to go to the bathroom/sure is coughing a lot/has a noisy lap child/is trying to talk to me.

What is this flight attendant's problem? She couldn't leave the whole Coke can?

And no Biscoffe cookies? I don't want these mini-pretzels. This is how they treat an American Airlines Advantage credit card holder?!

Let's stand up quickly after the plane lands to see if we can dart off ahead of those slowpokes sitting in front of us.

Back in the day, I was glued to the TV show LOST. Unpacking all the spiritual baggage of that series is another post for another day. But even on the surface level, the premise of the show’s excellent pilot is something that I think about sometimes when I'm with a group of strangers—in an elevator, on a plane, on a bus.

What if circumstances dictated that this group of strangers were all stuck together on a desert island and suddenly forced to cooperate as their only hope for survival?

Suddenly all these strangers that I'm writing off for their weight, smell, coughs—existence—would become flesh and blood human beings again.

I would be forced to confront their humanity, get to know them, and grant them a level of respect that I often do not offer in a more fleeting encounter. I would be curious to learn about their interests, talents, and experiences—and how we might collaborate to stay alive.

I'm not suggesting that you need to become chatty and gregarious on your next flight. I'm just reconsidering my general attitude of fear and loathing when I'm traveling or generally colliding with strangers on the daily journey of my life.

We're all trying to get somewhere, and there's plenty of room for two on the armrest.