About Flight Mode

Plane rides are so strange.

In life, our mind yanks us down different pathways. How we love to eat away the present by regretting and romanticising the past, or fretting about the future.

How you can be kissing a lover, and wonder whether you really locked your flat earlier!

(You did).

A secret to my happiness has been anchoring myself in the present. Instead of feeling butterflies in my chest at the thought of not speaking to that woman in the tube station when I was anxiously high on weed aged 21 (what could’ve been?)... it’s watching drops on the windowpane. Eating without television, laptop or phone. Leaving messages to write these words.

Feeding my dog lunch who has been patiently waiting – indefinitely – while I’ve been daydreaming. I’m here now. Don’t worry Laska.

Yet on plane rides... there is no present. No half-full coffee cups in meetings. Stripped of Wi-Fi and free movement, we float in a void of space and time zones. Past, present and future swirl and hold hands at the same dance. Kicking the present away and enveloping in a warm, passionate embrace.

Longing stretches out a lazy leg into the side aisle. Life goals begin to dot phone notes. You realise it’s been 6 hours since your last pee. Where am I again?

We have a free ticket to dream. Time travel to the soft light draping her hair in my bedroom... or to my future home with the woodland fairy art on the wall. The one with the nice frame from my parents’ house. I like that painting.

There’s no better place to think than Flight Mode.