By the time this gets published, I would have landed at my destination. Typing on the flight is a strange experience. It makes me feel like Nassim Nicholas Taleb who apparently booked a long haul flight, downed two espressos and wrote an entire book. Not a blog but an entire book.
Of course, unlike me, he must have flown business class with all the luxury in the world at his disposal. But still, the act of writing remains the same. Even though it’s just a post for my website. The tray table is my desk and it is me and my bluetooth keyboard plus my phone against the world.
After having experienced a good dose of ear barotrauma last time, I am curious to see how my ears react to the air pressure difference. But I have come prepared with gum and water.
The flight is delayed by 2 hours, nowadays the railways are more punctual, as someone was muttering. Everyone seemed antsy and on the edge. But sensing the mood at the gate, the blue coloured airline, gave us all a cute package as an apology for the aircraft that hadn’t shown up for over 2 hours.
A packet of spicy trail mix, one cookie and some fruit juice. We exchanged our bad moods for some snacks and all was well at gate 47 A. Weather is unpredictable in the north, what can they do after all, we spoke with our sugar induced empathy. Our anger and frustration dissipated, we were ready to become understanding and considerate passengers.
The road to the heart indeed goes via the stomach. I was in no mood for any sugar so I gave my package away. I was just glad that no excited passenger got into fist fights with anyone. There was no need for any more aviation heroes. Especially not at 1030 pm, when all of us are weary and simply want to end our day.
This is why I enjoy train travel more. Even if your train is delayed, you can at least lie down on your berth or pace about in the coach. If only there was a bullet train. Oh wait. Everytime I take a flight I reminisce about trains. Train travel can be quite fun, even for all the nostalgia. The short train ride I took from Ludhiana to Chandigarh was like that. But that’s for another time.
The value of your time increases as you grow older. There’s just so much to do. And yet giving up becomes necessary, as opposed to when you are younger, when you try hard to do everything and somehow even manage to juggle many things.
The magic of youth is also coupled with a lack of direction. Which is why many of us find it hard to get over some of our choices we made as younger people. Maybe therein lies the lesson. I don’t know when these lessons will stop but as you grow older, the lessons keep getting clearer.
Like trusting your gut. You come to realise that listening to your gut more deeply helps activate other higher order thinking. Which is the almost automatic responses to situations and things, the more attuned you are with your gut, the better your gut becomes at telling you things.
Though there is an urgent and logical need for data in the world of business, policy and governance, in our personal lives we are more prone to listen to our gut, and we mostly base our judgement on subjective feelings versus patterns of data. That’s what therapists do for us, they identify patterns in our behaviours which we tend to miss.
This always makes me question the intelligence of the human race. How are we so blind to our own actions but so vigilant about the actions of others? It is so easy to notice the patterns of others and make judgements. Perhaps this is why there is so much value attached to higher self awareness. Truly successful and famos people in the world are united by their high degree of self awareness.
This ability to reflect on your own actions, thoughts and being fierecely objective is an admirable quality indeed. Marcus Aurelius, the famous Roman emperor (no I don’t think about the Roman empire at least once a day),noted his reflections everyday. The translated version of his writings – Meditations – is commonly referred to by students of stoicism.
I try to practice stoicism. But these aspects of stoicism, especially the true objective self reflection has evaded me. I tend to gloss over my strengths and worry too much about all that is missing. If it were the other way around, life would be good.
Self reflection is hard for primarily three reasons. One, it makes your uncomfortable as it has the power to uncover the dark secrets which you have been burying deep within the layers of delusion. Sometimes, it is not just delusion, it is the willing fake-it-till-you make it attitude which helps us to get by in situations beyond our control. Second, self reflection requires effort. This itself is a big hurdle. Imagine you fight many battles in the day, and then you are required to also put yourself through this final test of strength. And guess what? The outcome is not always positive. And lastly, it only works if you do it everyday. The consistency, the effort and not so pleasnt outcome make it one of the hardest things to do.
But if Marcus Aurelius could do it, so can I. Or so I tell myself. My train of thought is now interrupted. Because the ultra sweet staff is now serving a midnight snack. They have run out of coffee. The usual stash is over. So the flight attendant with a kind smile is offering her own stash – the stuff that the crew has. Nescafe Classic. Ha! take that Taleb!
I have also realised that these uninterrupted blocks of time have become extremely rare in my life. And as much as I would like to carve out time, I am just not able to. But 35,000 feet above mean sea level, this block of time seems like just that thing I need. The solitude that I spoke about yesterday, maybe this is it. Sipping coffee, penning down free flowing thoughts and just enjoying the silence amid the hum of the engines.
Today will become tomorrow in a bit, and by that time I hope we will land in sweet sweet Bengaluru. I would have continued to write this but as we prepare for descent, I am going to sip on my coffee and practice self reflection in earnest.
Thanks for reading!
