Tag: Youtube

Flying Apart

I try to be even tempered about flying commercial airlines these days. What choice do I have? But it is not an experience I ever look forward to.

In the old days (twenty+ years ago), I used to love flying. Airplanes took me to some pretty cool places around the world: Argentina, South Korea, India, Egypt, Europe, Costa Rica, Hong Kong and all over Canada, to name a few destinations.

I was also accustomed to some rough road travel outside the Western world. I’m thinking of being part of a mule train for three days in the Himalayas. The ten days I spent riding across the Andes on horseback with an adventurous group of fellow travelers.

And fighting for breathing room on some of the oldest and ricketiest so-called buses in India. Vast numbers of locals sat on the roof and hung off the sides. Talk about held together by duct tape and chewing gum.

I loved that kind of traveling. Not only were the experiences cool, but they made for interesting memories. Now airline travel is just about as rough and memories of the experiences are not so great.

I loved flying and air travel so much I applied to become a flight attendant when I was 17. Too young, I learned. “Write back to us when you turn 19,” they wrote encouragingly in my rejection letter.

By then, I’d been accepted at university and my life went in an entirely different direction. I always wonder how life would have turned out had I reapplied to the airline instead of university when I was 19. Life is all about choices and I’d made mine.

In short flights between my home province of New Brunswick to see my Dad in Newfoundland, we almost anticipated being blocked out of St. John’s by fog. That meant rerouting us to Gander in the days when airlines paid for the hotel and supplied meal vouchers. It was the very epitome of excitement when we were teenagers.

Fast forward several decades later. Free meals for flight delays? Ha. Helpful airline personnel? If they are civil, I feel I have scored major. Forget efficiency. I just paid $200 to transport an empty box on this flight with me as baggage. (Yes. Really. It was less expensive than shipping the goods I will put in it another way, but seriously?)

My husband was a pilot with Pan American World Airways back in the day. They served prime rib roast beef prepared in an on board oven in first class with cloth napkins, free wine and real silver cutlery. The linen napkins had a small buttonhole so gentlemen could attach them to their shirt. Bygone era.

So when this Youtube video by Robert Reich popped up, it made sense of a lot going on in the aviation industry these days. As intelligent, funny and charming as economist Robert Reich is, his message is most discouraging.

Even my husband – a bona fide world traveler and former commercial airline pilot who had flown too many hours in his career to even count – is a most reluctant airline passenger these days. We have settled for embellishing our everyday meals with the linen napkins he kept as souvenirs from aviation’s Golden Age.

Airline travel is never going to be again what airline travel once was. Robert Reich explains why. It’s about 6 minutes long.

Ain’t It Awful?

There is a personal payoff in being a little withdrawn and isolated from the world occasionally. Many people spend a lot of time observing the world and listening to the news and hearing politicians expertly and bloodlessly dissect their opponents. Those people, understandably, often have a very dim worldview.

A common complaint I hear about the state of the world is that it is awful and they can’t do anything about it. For the most part, they are correct. But what most people don’t get is that what happens out there in those other theaters of life isn’t of much importance or relevance to their own daily lives.

Yes, of course, the decisions of politicians and policies and laws that are enacted affect our pocketbook and standard of living. They may decide what we can and cannot do or where we can and cannot go. As for our regular daily lives, they are simply so much noise. It is our choice whether to listen to that noise or not.

I feel sorry for young people today who are held sway by the endless pageantry of new developments in technology and the Internet. There is this influencer who must be followed and then that one and have you seen whats-her-names newest trend-setting video but he’s all the rage now and she no longer counts. How in hell do they keep it all straight in their heads. Maybe they don’t.

Unplugging from technology seems analogous to committing social suicide these days. It is particularly sad that young people – teenagers say – who are at the very point of trying to discover who they are and what they want to be in life, have to dig through, filter out and mirror their life choices against the preaching of dozens of online personalities. Strangers in point of fact.

I am not as vulnerable to this information overload as I once was but I cannot say I am not influenced. Some websites and video reels catch me and have an uncanny power to eat up a half hour or more of my time before I am even conscious of it. There are several excellent writers out there who have my attention and I feel I can barely keep up with their output.

The chief culprits in my life presently are Facebook video cooking reels. A revolving cast of chefs from all sorts of genres display feats of culinary prowess that I would give anything to replicate. The videos are almost choreographed ballets as much as they are recipe-sharing. Happily, I am old enough to realize, that while they are dazzling, I am not inclined to beat myself up if I cannot recreate their splendid creations in my own kitchen.

I take that analogy and apply its potential to more impressionable and searching young people. I can only imagine that they must suffer for not always having the “right” clothes, or the most up-to-date cellphone, and maybe spontaneous weekend trips to anywhere but here. It is kinda diabolical.

As old as I am and with the resources I can draw on, some of these come-ons attract me. I don’t act on them and I don’t suffer for not acting on them. But if I were younger, I might feel left out.

I was at first bemused by and then a little sad to learn there is an actual thing out there called FOMO – “fear of missing out.” It seems to be there is so much technological space litter available out there that you can’t help but be missing out on something.

It is like some kind of fiendish device that is deliberately designed to keep us all “off-balance.” It seems to force people to rely exclusively on “significant” “others” “outside” themselves to find joy and happiness. They even seem to rely on them to tell them who they are. That is the biggest fraud of all. And a dangerous one if you are particularly fragile or vulnerable.

My version of “Give Peace A Chance” is unplugging from time to time. I rarely watch the news on television anymore. It is an irritation to the spirit and has an eerily similar sameness with its litany of tragedy, and skulduggery, and focuses on the worst of what humans are and do.

Books give me greater comfort. I can pick and choose among them for lessons I want to learn and master and access the emotional experiences I want to have. That is why popular successful authors are so popular. They are reliable and predictable in their style and output. Sure seems to me that in a world that is most kindly described as a little topsy-turvy, I’ll take a circuitous John Grisham novel bashing the legal system over CNN and Youtube anytime.

It keeps a rein on my sanity and a paddock for my well-being.