My Life at 35000 Feet

If you’ve never experienced sitting in an airplane at 35000 feet for 28 hours, it is a powerful experience. After a while you can no longer begin to differentiate between morning and night and there are only so many movies one can sit through without feeling a bit numb. Combine that with the stomach dropping turbulence and it makes for a wild ride. But do you want to know the most interesting part of the whole long-distance flying experience? It is being alone with your thoughts and yourself in one seat, in one location, for more than a day straight. It is enough to paralyze you and ignite you. The choice is always yours.

As I embark on a new journey in a new land in a new place I will be calling home for the next 3 years, many thoughts begin to run through my head. Am I making the right choice giving up a great life in the US? Will it be worth closing that chapter of my life and starting anew in a place with no family and very few friends? Will this experience be everything I expect it to be and more? I have been pondering and promulgating these questions in my mind and many more throughout the long flight and the best answer I have come up with is “I don’t know” but it is ok that I don’t know. I don’t know how everything will work out. I don’t know if this will be the right choice or if this journey will be worth it. I don’t know if this experience will be everything I hope it will be. I just don’t know. But what would life look like if we always knew what the next step would be. What if our entire life’s plan and all of the results were handed down to us ahead of time from G-d and there was no uncertainty or unknown? To some that may be very safe and reassuring, but to me, that sounds a bit boring.

I believe all of us were put on earth to create; to create the story that is our life. It is as if our life is a blank notebook and our story has yet to be told. We are sitting down with a pencil in hand and an unlimited supply of blank sheets for us to create and transcribe the story of our life. Will the story be a flawless literary piece the first time with no mistakes, bad sentences, messed up story lines, careless grammatical mistakes, and no points where you want to give up on your “story?” Not a chance! The beauty of the story is it never ends until it ends. You will undoubtedly write a part of the story that doesn’t make sense or doesn’t excite you and then what do you do? You erase it or throw the paper away again and again until you get it right. How do you know that you have gotten it right? Well, have you ever read a great book or story or watched an amazing movie, and said to yourself, “That was IT!”? It is an intrinsic feeling that reverberates throughout your body and moves you in such a way that is difficult to describe.

When we begin to sit back and realize there are no should-be’s or have-to’s and all there is to be is a creator who is continuously creating, we begin to shed ourselves of expectations which are wrought with disappointments. We begin to enter the zone of “being” where everything that is, is exactly where we are supposed to be. Do you want to be happier? Choose to be happier. Do you want to have more peace or more purpose in your life? Then choose it to be so! What is your story going to be? What is going to be your 28 hour plane ride at 35000 feet?