I recently travelled by aeroplane to Scotland (this is why this blog and my webcomic haven’t been updated in a little while, sorry) and this was my first ride on board a plane. It was quite exciting in some ways, but also not too different from, say, a bus in others. However, my experience when flying home was rather profound.
My flight was delayed by four hours, which was a little furstrating, but this meant that I was flying when it was dark outside, rather than during daylight, and I liked this very much indeed. I had a window seat and I was looking out for the whole way. As it flew along, I could see all the lights from the cities, towns and roads below. It may not sound like much, but this had a huge effect on me.
Entire cities were passed in the space of a few seconds and I couldn’t help but think of the millions of people sleeping or preparing for bed in the world down below and of all the emotionally charged experiences of all those people. The excitement of a new job, the excitement of a new love, the bonding of close friends, the pleasure of writing a good story, the stunned pain of a death, the bubbling excitement of looming Christmas, the mystique of wandering any of those places during the dead of night. There’ll be stories like that for every single person in the cities below and it made me reflect on all of my own experiences of that kind. Perhaps it’s because it was the later (more emotional) hours of the days and perhaps it’s because I was listening to nice music on my iPod, but I thought it was a beautiful experience.
