In Transition

As the plane takes off I see the mountain rising out of a sea of clouds. The city lights of Cape Town are fading in the rising sun that paints the mountain golden. The beauty of this is almost painful…

As the plane turns and the mountain gets dragged out of sight I suddenly get this feeling of a total anti-climax. I had one hour of sleep in the last twenty-four hours. I am feeling tired and exhausted on all levels. For a moment I ask myself why on earth I am on this plane.

Then I breathe and sink back into the seat easing myself into the space. I start feeling that there is no point in asking myself such questions since I can’t really go anywhere else now. I get a sense of peacefulness.

It is this feeling of being in transition. I have left one place because I decided I wanted to go somewhere else. Now I am in this space between places and in the time it takes to get from one to the other.

It is a familiar feeling, a feeling that airports and planes hold. I look around me and feel a strange bond with all the strangers on the plane. All these people come from different places and for very different reasons have decided to travel to some other place. Their lives are so different. There is not much talking going on between the strangers, yet they are all sharing the same space for a whole day, all of them in transition.

I can sense that some of these people hate this state for the very same reason that leaves me with a sense of peacefulness.

Today no movement is possible. It is not so much the fact that you can’t stretch your legs without knocking over the glass of water in front of you. It is much more the feeling of not being able to shift anything either in the place you are coming from or in the place you are going to. You cannot even change the route or the timing in which to get somewhere. All of us are at this point in time completely reliant on the technicalities of the airplane and the abilities of the pilot.

Why does this make me feel peaceful? I certainly feel that the freedom and the ability to make choices is an important part of our lives. Being in a position where you can make choices about where you want to be or what you want to do is a precious thing, but once a choice is made we also need to learn to trust the process of getting where we chose to go to.

This brings me back to the transitional feeling I have sitting on this flight from Cape Town to Berlin. This is a situation where all I can do is sit and trust that I will get to where I need to get to without me doing anything more. I have made all the arrangements and am now on a journey. So why not trust that I have chosen the right path and use this time to be grateful for the moments I have had where I come from and looking forward to the moments I will experience where I am going to?!