Landing
28 Days of Asking: Day 21
I’m writing this from 35,000 feet. Somewhere over Arizona, maybe New Mexico. About two hours left. We should touch down around 9:15 PM Eastern.
My body is still in California. My mind is already in Miami, running through Monday’s meeting, the boys tomorrow, the pile of emails to follow up on. I can feel myself holding the weight before I’ve even landed.
And there’s something so off the wall about flying. We don’t talk about it much because it’s become routine, but it’s one of the oddest social rituals we’ve normalized.
You remove your shoes. You surrender your liquids over 3 oz. You remove your computers and tablets (but not your phones) from bags to run through the advanced detection. And of course, you shuffle through a security maze like ants.
Then you board a metal tube with a couple of hundred strangers and sit inches apart for hours. No one makes eye contact unless you are under the age of 5. The armrest becomes contested territory (it’s the middle seat’s God-given right). The recline button becomes a moral dilemma of timing.
It’s truly wacko.
Anthropologist Edward T. Hall spent decades studying how humans use physical space, mapping what he called our “proxemic zones” in his 1966 book The Hidden Dimension. The intimate zone (zero to eighteen inches) is reserved for lovers, children, and close family. We let almost no one else that close. Yet here we are, shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers for hours, our intimate zones completely collapsed. So we adapt. We stare at screens. We build invisible walls. We pretend the person three inches away barely exists…unless of course you’re feeling the call to connect and share.
That’s where the proximity does something else. Harvard sociologist Mario Luis Small found that people often share deeply personal concerns with weak ties: acquaintances and strangers rather than close friends. On a plane, you’re already bumping shoulders with someone you’ll never see again. The forced closeness tricks the nervous system into a kind of false intimacy. Psychologist Zick Rubin called this the “passing stranger effect”. We reveal more precisely because there are no consequences. The seatmate becomes a confessional booth with beverage service. Share your divorce story, your complicated parents, your fear of what comes next. You’ll both deplane and disappear.
And finally, the cabin itself provides an absurd environment. At cruising altitude, the pressurized air simulates roughly 6,000 to 8,000 feet of elevation, a mild hypoxia that research in Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine links to increased fatigue and reduced vigor. Add the low humidity, the engine drone, the complete surrender of control. You can’t leave, and you can’t change your mind. You sit there suspended, perhaps watching a movie you’d never choose on the ground, sipping a liquid treat like it’s the panacea to all airplane ailments.
And somehow, we all just welcome it as the price for the modern convenience of air travel. And frankly, it’s quite convenient!
Day 21: How do I protect what I found before it fades?
Before I land, I know what’s coming next. The noise. The logistics. The inbox. The return of all the roles I stepped away from.
I also know that vacation benefits fade fast. The Journal of Happiness Studies puts it bluntly: most people return to baseline within a week of coming home. The calm dissolves. The clarity clouds over. The pace you swore you’d keep? Gone by Wednesday.
So the question isn’t just, "How do I hold onto this feeling?" It’s what am I actually trying to protect?
Maybe it’s the pace of Sonoma, the morning blending into afternoon without abrupt transitions. Maybe it’s the way Lauren and I moved through the days, unhurried, connected, laughing at nothing. Maybe it’s the space to breathe, think, and play.
And I’m not home yet. I still have a couple of hours in this strange suspended state.
I’m going to use it. Write a few more things down. Let the landing come when it comes.
And tomorrow, when I pick up the boys and my world gets noisy again, I’ll try to remember: I don’t have to lose everything I found. I just have to protect some of those practices that got me settled into this vacation.
