I lost Sunday completely somewhere between Vancouver and Hong Kong. Did it arrive as we sailed over Alaska? Or were we closer to Japan? Did Sunday end as we flew quietly over Korea’s skies? I’ll never know.
When I wake up mid-flight and look at my watch, I’m always angry at myself. So it’s 6 o’clock. What the bloody hell does that mean? It means it’s 6 o’clock in the city I left. It’s not 6 o’clock now, in this very moment, on this plane, in this space, right here. No one knows what time it is. Really. (Ever.)
And this makes me realize how attached to time I am. We all are. We are fixed to it. (And I become particularly fixated on it when I’m counting down the hours on a 13 hour flight.)
But when I stop and realize that I’m in between — that the entire plane full of people are — I feel calmer. We are all just soaring through time and space. We are in no time zone. No place, either. We are literally hanging about in a place that has no fixed time nor place. And this makes me feel more real somehow.
In between, not fixed, I feel more free. I feel unfettered, in a way. (If I can forget about the fact that I’m stuck inside a very restrictive vehicle.) What I’m trying to say, I think, is that being away from time and place up in the air gives me a chance to contemplate more who I AM. Not what I’m attached to or reliant upon or who is dependent on me. Just me. And who I am.
And then the plane lands and I am fixed to a time and place again. And that’s good, because then I can focus on how who I am is going to fit into that context. Being in between, though, is tremendously helpful and facilitates focus.
Take a step back. Be in between. Focus. Who are you? And what contexts do you fit into?
The answers to those questions are, for me, today’s truth.
