(I wrote this on a recent flight I took, thought I’d share.)

I’m the only person I know that really loves flying.

When you stand on the surface of the world, you look up at the sky and the clouds and you think they’re a part of the earth. You picture the globe as this big ball with lots of layers: the top layer is the sky, and then the second layer is the earth and that’s where we are, like the sky is that empty inch at the bottom of a glass between the bottom of the liquid and the bottom of the glass.

But really, the sky is just the veil between earth and space. It’s not the glass at the bottom of a glass, it’s the fragile froth on top of the drink. It’s like an umbrella protecting the earth from outside elements; it’s an essential accessory, but you wouldn’t describe your umbrella as a part of you. It’s ethereal, it’s just air, you can just pass through it. That’s what happens when we fly. Out of this little metal box, I peered out the window and watched as we shot across the land, then triumphantly rocketed away from it, the world as I know it fallling away beneath me and I realised I was journeying not into the sky but into space. The clouds got closer and closer until we were among them, and even now I keep glancing out at the window, looking at the clouds up close. You never get to be this close to the clouds except right now, for a few blessed hours in the sky.

I have a lot of big dreams, but at the root of them all is a desire to ascend. I that’s true of most people, whatever your line of work. There seems to be something primal about the sense of satisfaction you feel from being higher than you used to be, looking down at the spot you were standing before and knowing you’re not there anymore. It’s not a smugness, because you always come down again, but going up there means you capture that feeling and bring it down with you, so you can always look up and think “I went up there once”.

I’m gonna wrap this up. I want to look at the clouds up close while I still can.