From 30,000 Feet

Looking back on my last plane flight - my only plane flight - I remember what it's like to cross paths with people in a small, cramped area with the inability to ignore your neighbor with any great success.

It's such a perfect snapshot of humanity.

I was flying on the way to Missouri. A woman next to me broke open a diary and started to write in it. And it's a boring flight, with not much to do ... I read snatches of it over her shoulder.

And I've never wanted to hug a complete stranger more than I did at that moment.

A little snapshot of a woman, leaving all that she knew, to take a job away from the life she'd built. Writing a note about how much she missed her boyfriend and how she would have to find a good place here to take him when he came to visit her. Her way of making all of this a bit better. How nervous she was.

And I never learned her name. I never learned anything more about her. She hurried off the plane ahead of me. Business suit and everything. All I could do was hope that she would be able to make a new life here.

On the return flight, I was several seats ahead of a conversation. And I couldn't help hearing.

A woman stuck in the United States, unable to return to her home country and family in the Netherlands, because of Covid-19 restrictions in both countries. How she had to stay with friends here. Crashing on sofas. And how only now was she starting to work out how to get home.

And, like the other woman, I never learned her name or the outcome of her story. I left the plane ahead of her, heading back home, entering the airport to transfer to my other flight and she headed to another plane.

My last transfer flight had a couple. One woman gripping her chair so hard that her nuckles were white. I watched her and tried to work out why she was flying if she was so clearly terrified of it. She never said a word. But her husband would rest his hand on hers every now and again. And throughout the whole flight, she would just look ahead.

Another snapshot that you never learn the story of.

Sitting in a plane lets you see a person with just a fraction of attention. And you wonder what you're missing.

I wonder who looked at me and took a snapshot of my life. My pile of books, growing and shrinking as I went. Me, writing in my own diary, while the plane was buffered by a lightning storm. Who looked at me and took a small thoughts and assumption about my life? Who doesn't know my story, but knows a little picture of it?

It's such an interesting thought, to think who you can enter your life for the briefest moments and still leave a memory.

Now, looking to my future plane trips, I can't wait. I can't wait to get more snapshots of lives that aren't my own.

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Title was inspired by the song 30,000 Feet by Ben Rector.

I remembered this idea for this story for the same reason.

I wrote about these events very soon after they happened in my diary, but they are still likely to be inaccurate in some form or fashion, just due to the biases I have of viewing strangers. So, even though these are very simple tales, take anything here with a grain of salt. ;)