Welcome to the “friendly Skies”
So today marks the anniversary of the first “successful” flight by Orville wright in 1903. If you ever want to think about how we’ve progressed in history look at transportation. after all the first flight was 12 seconds long and if you ever get pulled aside for a special screening at airport. Security it seems they spend at least that long running that wand around and feeling various body parts to make sure you didn’t cram a grenade into your left nostril or some other unlikely opening. anyway we routinely put people into a metal tube fill. I full of explosive liquid and shoot it across the sky. If evolution splits off into a different path maybe we’ll develop a personal cannon system that musts loads a person in and fires them across hundreds of miles to the exact spot they are headed using Google Earth satellite technology.
Either that or if we want a real advance maybe we could spend a bunch of resources making great pedestrian options and when the virus is under control we could walk around, enjoy the world, say hello to each other, build up our immune systems with some fresh air and sunshine enhanced vitamin D and such.
We save a lot of time going places faster and faster... yet I’ve never heard tell of a tombstone that reads “I wish I would have done this faster”... Maybe I’ll put that on my cremation canister or urn or the folders Can they use because everyone wants to be “good to the last. Drop” and when they drop your remains into the ocean or into the river or off the mountain isn’t that really the last drop? I digress...
seeking Peace and joy means that we are aware and pay attention to stuff... The thing about air travel is that once you get buckled in and know that you are supposed to put your mask on before you worry about people around you —-good lord even in your last moments you are supposed to think “me first”—well after. That reminder flying is pretty much sitting in a small chair and if you want to really get the experience without the headaches of airport. Security you can put a small stack of pizza coupons under the front. Feet of a kitchen chair so that you are in the “reclined” position of the plane and then have someone smack you in the elbow every 45 minutes or so to approximate the moving of the beverage cart up and down the aisle.
Oh well.... here’s the deal... if you are on a plane and going really fast to somewhere don’t think about the time you save because you haven’t saved a something that was yours to control to begin with. You see we use money to save time and what is money...well these days it’s little bits of electronic data stored. On little pieces of designed sand stored in a box in an air-conditioned room because storing. Money in little pieces of paper was too inconvenient and so we had to digitize it. The point is..Mooney isn’t money or isn’t anything we define and control either really... so we are using something that barely exists to save time that doesn’t really exist beyond the experiences we have during it. So yes there’s the p[oint... seeking peace and joy is seeking the experiences and meaning of being where we are when we are there and not worrying about how fast we can be someone else being someone else. We can change as people and that’s very cool because it means we are directing our experiences, realizing we can’t control some of them, and constructing new meanings to be shared with others.
When you fly do so knowing you are skipping a lot of experiences in between and tha’t usually the case when we view life in the “if -then” mentality so when you choose an “if then” frame of reference know you are possibly setting yourself.up to miss the best tenderloin in Johnson County or the goofiest. Looking water tower in Hamilton township or the guy with the most remarkable accent South of the Mason/Dixon line ( oh and who were Mason and Dixon...didn’t they fight a battle over who got to name those canning jars?—Because if so then maybe Dixon should have targeted the lids and then we would have had Mason-Dixon uniting to bring us canned green beans in late January?
The point is... advances. Are cool and yet do they change the speed at which we can experience anything? Maybe the pandemic bothers us the most because it changes the speed at which we can experience things? Just a thought..
Maybe a `12 second flight was enough... how about we take the next 12 seconds thinking about what we can do for someone else today or about the gifts we have been given to do what we did yesterday and then get our tray tables in the upright position and go out to seek some more peace and joy. BTW the chorus to the song showed up...stay tuned for it tomorrow.
gotta Fly
You had me at the title of this sweet gem.
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