#32: Together, We Can Take It Higher
Understanding the resultant force of travel on a human body.
Travel by air is a deeply beautiful, unsettling event.
Although we’re hurtling through a cerulean desert with abandon, it still feels like we’re standing firmly on solid ground.
Looking through the tiny windows, though, I can see where the sunset bleeds out into the inky edges of the sky.
Far overhead is the part of the sky where particles smash into various gases, making the northern lights sing.
Flowing below us are the layers of weather. Sometimes, the conditions allow us to float across the very top of the stratosphere; other times, we are shaken and stirred. We always stay in the sky, though, thanks to nine parts physics and one part good fortune.
Up in the clouds, we have no place. The sun’s light and the sky’s colours provide cues to the progression of time, but our individual stories are suspended in the sky with us.
For a few hours, we are alone.
Two Forces, Acting in Opposite Directions
The need to belong to others - to be a part of something - is a force that, like gravity, cannot be ignored. Abraham Maslow identified belongingness as a layer amid our hierarchy of needs, only to be addressed after satisfying physiologcal (e.g., food, water, shelter) and safety needs (e.g., a job, healthcare).
If those could be adequately addressed, then we can meet our need for connection with other people, be they through friendship, family, or intimacy. Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary went further, initially proposed in the mid-1990s that we are fundamentally driven by a need to create and maintain bonds - to belong.
Leaving our people to travel, then, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. As complex creatures1 , though, we are motivated by strange forces other than belonging, and satisfying our curiosity through world experience is a very persuasive, innately satisfying force. To have a new place and its people accept our presence, even if only for a moment, and to create a new frame of reference, we are dislodged from our familiarity. A plant in need of dividing, we travel to shake out our roots and find fresh, fertile soil to support further growth.
I love this about travel, and the prospect, and then the act, of going on a new adventure moves me to an excited state. I tumble into new cities and towns, a one-woman aurora borealis with a camera flash and a growing pocket of colourful souvenirs. I am pulled into random shops on my way to the one or two places I might have originally penciled in for the day. I’m open to opportunity and determined to soak as much energy as possible before my body absolutely requires rest.
I am a molecule2 on a mission.
When the mission ends, I’m still buzzing with energy. In part, I’m absorbing all the lessons I’ve learned - but it’s also because I’m excited about going home.
Did You Miss Me While You Were Looking for Yourself Out There?
Back in the airport, waiting to head home, I’m disjointed. Trying to move through an unending, circular flow of people and space and time, I give myself up to the tides of travellers sauntering or speeding through the hallways of oddly-placed restaurants and novelty shops and services. My thoughts are punctuated with announcement notifications. Suitcases roll around me, and outside the windows of the departure lounge, another plane streaks into the sky.
I’ll find an armchair or some other cozy nook, and armed with coffee, pen and paper, I write and people watch.
The minutes pass, and, reliably, predictably, I feel the growing rush; warmed, from the inside out, as time creeps closer to boarding.
Because, while curiosity drives me, belonging does, too.
Being surrounded by other human beings doesn’t guarantee a sense of belonging. Belonging actually has to do with identification as a member of a group and the higher quality interactions which come from that.3
I can be connected to people back home through my phone. I can see pictures of my city. But neither compare to seeing the harbour below me, then walking in my front door 30 minutes later. It’s something so mundane, yet it makes my heart ache with love.
For me, there’s no other high.
Sometimes.
That phrasing being a nod to my colleague Alli.
Jeanine Stewart, in Missing Your People: Why Belonging is So Important and How to Create it (Brower, 2021)
Wonderful post, Bryn.
There's something so 'other' about flying, isn't there? It's bonkers! I haven't been in a plane for years, actually - I wonder if I'll go anywhere once Covid is just a memory? I used to go all over the place, though. My dad's a retired pilot, and I remember asking him in awe, as a child: 'Daddy, have you ever flown through a cloud?' My mind was BLOWN when he told me that rainbows are round....! 🌈
This is your best yet--moving and personal. I feel like I went on a journey with you.