Yesterday I flew on an airplane to arrive at a city where I went to a hotel and rode the elevator to my room on the 10th floor. \u00a0As the elevator doors closed and I zipped upward, I thought about what was below me. \u00a0Hundreds of feet of air. \u00a0But it\u2019s not scary because the doors close, the elevator music plays, and I feel nice and safe in a small little enclosed box. \u00a0I can\u2019t see how high I am or the big drop below. \u00a0\u00a0In the airplane, it\u2019s even worse.<\/p>\n
We board a plane and sit in our little rows of seats as if we are in a miniature movie theatre. The doors are shut, sometimes even the window shades are pulled, and we pretend to relax while hurdling along at 500 mph. \u00a0We are 35000 feet above the ground, held up by thin air. \u00a0In fact, the air just outside the closed window shade is so thin it won\u2019t do you any good to breath it. \u00a0It doesn\u2019t really matter anyway because at -40 degrees, it would probably freeze your lungs if you did take a breath. And since that -40 degree air is blowing at a constant 60 mph (even if the plane were not moving through it) it would probably freeze the rest of you pretty fast too. \u00a0Yet we sit inside sipping a Coke, eating pretzels, reading a book, and pretending the inside is all there is. We can ignore the insanity of the harsh environment outside because we are inside. \u00a0Meanwhile, we bet our life that a million things that could go wrong, won’t. \u00a0<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know which is more crazy. \u00a0To fly in an airplane? \u00a0Or to live a life so inwardly focused that you don\u2019t notice the insanity around you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday I flew on an airplane to arrive at a city where I went to a hotel and rode the elevator to my room on the 10th floor. \u00a0As the elevator doors closed and I zipped upward, I thought about what was below me. \u00a0Hundreds of feet of air. \u00a0But it\u2019s not scary because the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2434"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2435,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2434\/revisions\/2435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}