My Attitude Adjustment That Makes Flying Relaxing

I’m not a huge fan of air travel. I mean, I like where it takes me but as a someone who enjoys control, has anxious tendencies and watched too much Air Crash Investigations as a kid, I haven’t always found it to be an enjoyable experience. Certainly never a relaxing one.

If you’re someone who does enjoy flying and has never had an issue with it then I’m happy for you and I would like to personally congratulate you on being born rich. I however, like most working/middle class people who didn’t do much flying as a kid and have only seen the inside of the Qantas lounge via Kath & Kim, need to work hard to make air travel bearable.

And now, I’m delighted to say, I find it relaxing. Yes, relaxing. How do you enjoy flying when you’re an anxious person? With the help of three small attitude changes, that’s how.

I do the things I do and I don’t ask why.

Surrender Control

Earlier I mentioned having some controlling tendencies. To give you an idea, I prefer to have the remote control whenever possible, like to be the driver in group situations and although I will remain silent as a passenger, I will sometimes silently press down on a phantom break pedal when I think the driver is breaking too late. I like to think they are mild and manageable controlling tendencies and not the extreme that restaurant owners on Kitchen Nightmares have as they insist on doing every possible job in their failing eatery.

But getting into a big metal tube that I am not only underqualified but forbidden to control agitates me a bit. It’s terrifying that shit could go balls up, air masks could drop from the roof and the only option I’ll have is whether or not I’ll scream while putting my mask on because like the plane, my bowels will also be out of my control.

So simply I must accept that when I step on the plane I have surrendered my control.

My uncle Anthony told me this technique, he used to fly back to Australia twice a year when he lived in Singapore. My uncle claims he is a control freak, a trait he unfortunately passed down to my cousin Luca who hated flying as a little kid too. Anthony told us that in order to have a relaxing flight you must put your faith in the hands of the pilot and wash your hands of any ability to do anything in an emergency. Remember, the pilot and co-pilot are (well paid) professionals and they are in control for that reason. You cannot backseat fly, you don’t know how. Instead, surrender your control to these professionals who manage the daring feat of aviation with a confident ease that most of us would like to have while parallel parking.

When I get on the plane, I look to the pilots cabin and think to myself “my life is your hands now mate. You break it you buy it.”

Appreciate The Miracle Of Air Travel

I know it sounds hippy but I find flying a lot more enjoyable when I remember how batshit fucking crazy it is that we’re even doing it to begin with. The Wright brothers flew the first airplane in 1903 which means we are some of the luckiest people in human history. Our ancestors could only gaze up at the birds and think “aah how the other half live” but funds permitting, we can beat those birds and eat a Weisse bar while doing it!

In the book How To Travel by The School Of Life, they put it best in their chapter ‘The Pleasure of the Flight’ just how easily we treat this modern day miracle as a bothersome chore. Instead of marvelling at the the engineering genius that reduces trips to one 600th of their previous length we weep over reclining seats, rights to an arm rest and whether or not you should applaud when the plane lands. The school says it better than me so I’m just going to share the quotes that helped me for the rest of this segment.

“No one thinks it remarkable that somewhere above an ocean we flew past a vast white candy-floss island which would have made a perfect seat for an angel or even God himself in a painting by Piero della Francesca. No one leaps to their feet to announce with requisite emphasis that, out of the window, we are flying over a cloud, a matter that would have amazed Leonardo and Poussin, Claude and Constable.”

“We spear a tiny potato or a small piece of fish and prise the foil top off a squat cartoon of orange juice as we pass over a region where, four miles below on the ground, we would need to travel in an armed convoy.”

“The physical world - against which our ancestors struggled - has been tamed; our little tub of alloy and glass slips calmly over the forests, deserts and oceans that thwarted and terrified them.”

Basically, I just try to be little grateful that I am one of the first of my lineage to make a journey across the world without developing sea legs of scurvy. Plus being on a flight allows me to do the thing that really helps me relax…

Waste Time

Based on my last point two points you might have thought this segment would have sounded more productive but while I’m flying productivity can go run off with time management and start an OnlyFans for all I care. Fuck being productive on a flight.

In an episode of Friends, that noodle Ross talks about how his new commute which is longer by an hour either way is a blessing because ‘he has been given the gift of time’. The studio audience laughs because this neurotic loveable loser actually thinks he’s going to spend that transient time learning a new language, reading books written by doctors and listening to challenging albums that are actually just shit.

Well I am a neurotic loveable loser who sees air travel as the gift of time, just not for anything productive. Why would I? I’m on bloody holiday! Yes, I could try and work. I could brainstorm some article ideas, update my LinkedIn or write a poem inspired by the tranquillity of gliding above the clouds like an angel looking for a place to bask. But I don’t.

If I’ve been given the gift of time I want it to be a time outside of professional and work commitments. While I am in the air relaxing is my only priority.

When I’m at home, playing video games or watching something I’ve already seen always manages to feel like a waste of time. Because of my neurotic ways, I always end a gaming/binging/social media sesh feeling like I have lost time that I should have spent reading, writing or learning a language that people actually speak and not High Valyrian. It’s an attitude I have to change when I first walk in to that pressurised cabin.

Instead of beating myself up for ‘wasting time’ I applaud myself for it because I reached my goal of relaxation. If time is an Gellerian gift then it needs to be ‘me time’ where I can indulge in those guilty little timewasters and take a break from the hustle that will hound us to our graves. So I go ahead and binge that show that looks stupid, load up Plants vs Zombies and watch that version of Four Weddings with the queer parts edited out because I booked an airline based in a homophobic country.

Spend the flight doing something mindless that relaxes you, you’re paying for it after all.