In the last twelve months, everything on the ground has changed. But today I find myself in the same spot I was almost exactly a year ago: about 37,000 feet above the ground in a pressurized cabin with a little more than 100 people, looking down at the top of the clouds that are still a mountainous wonderland of pillowy white. There may be a blizzard or a rainstorm produced in their underbelly, but from here, the world is blue and bright.
I’m not sure what state I might be flying over right now. It may be Arkansas or Missouri. But what I do know is that somewhere on the ground there is a mother worried about how she will pay the bills as she’s also being judged for not being in her home to make her child a grilled cheese sandwich; there is a Menards that is packed full of shoppers; there is a group of friends with a mile left on their hike-and it’s all uphill; there is a nurse who, despite being in a COVID-19 unit, continues to go to work every day; there is a hotel owner getting ready to reopen the doors for the spring and summer months; and there is a person taking their last breath without anyone by their side.
It’s a lot to think about. And for an empath, it’s a lot to carry.
I’m certain that this plane is carrying thousands of pounds of flesh and cargo, and yet, there are moments when my body feels weightless.
Honestly, I’m not sure why any of us want to land. Everything from this viewpoint is as it should be, and as it always has been.
Yet, we do. The plane would run out of gas or the people would finally get tired of not being connected to the internet, so we come back down to Earth, go our separate ways, and jump right back into the ever-changing landscape we call life.
When you watch a buffalo graze on grass just as they have for thousands of years or when you see the ridges of Spearfish Canyon and think about how the rock near the bottom is older than the time you can wrap your head around, the little day-to-day things we worry ourselves about seem meaningless.
And yet, as I land, as I am reconnected with my children, we will grab ice cream and stop at the grocery store for ingredients to make dinner. We will jump into this messy world that just looked like little houses and little cars as we descended from the plane. There is nothing like flying to remind us how small we really are. Still, those little tasks that we complete, are moving our souls, both individually and collectively, somewhere new.
