The Speed of Life

Godspeed, Budget Air travel.

When I was young, I used to bus around the city and gamble my chances without a clue as to where, or when I would alight. There was always a suspense palpable through the end of my seat as my eyes were glued to the windows, consuming each fast moving image with an insatiable appetite as I moved, leaving no sights unseen. I saw buildings as they looked like sculptures; vehicles as they looked like moving boxcars; pedestrians as they looked like figures, who were impervious to my scanning everything and nothing at once for all the exhilaration that looking outwardly provided. In those days, the journey only mattered because I wasn't going anywhere, in particular; I just kept moving.

However, today, everything moves at a different pace. "The speed of life", as David Bowie used to sing. With a purpose in whatever I do, wherever I go- the places I'm but only too eager to arrive at, I've learned to take charge in any bending course, setting goals no matter how tricky, tedious, and more often, in pursuance of an end that they are.

Unfortunately, sometimes, I too, wean myself off the joy of in its process. Harking back, if my goal was to write well, and writing were a game sport, I would have been its benchwarmer because that's all I seemed to be doing then: sitting on it even when I was shamelessly bad at it. That my reluctance to write stemmed in the same dread as a can't-do attitude. Stringing sentences without any logical structure, or connecting my ideas so carelessly it made my peers wish they'd fact checked the Yellow Pages instead, I only sought after change much later because I wanted to move away from that tight spot of torpor. I wanted to become a disciplined writer who would never shy away from the writing pad every time the urge to write nagged me to do so. And relentless as it sounds, knowing it to be an uphill goal only aggravated my discomfort. I would rather sit through a fifty hour plane ride, if the engines don't fail me first, than to remain stationary as I were, in other words.

Excitedly, I went head-on and became my own critic, my own friend, my own cast of heroic influences that saw the ilk of great writers breathing down my neck: "I wouldn't punctuate that way, if I were you. You're no beat writer- you're not even American." What I saw in myself, apart from a no-good typewriter, was also an overambitious cow. I turned writing into a performance, its pleasure into a stressor, for which I've lost sleep over the spat that I could, perhaps, never truly aspire my goals.

Have I changed since? Yes, in ways that'd be petty to crow about today, and yet, not quite since I'm still feeling as foreign to writing as a whore in a church. But what I've learnt somewhere in between the analogy, is that gradual change yields results if I kept persisting, no matter how unlikely, or unending the journey seemed.

Like getting strapped to your seat on flight, journeying through a goal can feel liminal. It's easy to be looking inward, after all, when the only thing that's really captivating at an outward glance of the window is a monotonous overcast. You're in view of wailing toddlers, snorers, talkers, nightmare neighbours who're fighting for the armrest or holding your arm like one. If you're wishing for sights to see, there are but none. As with gradual change, goals are like plane rides; it's like flying off home ground toward somewhere far more breathtaking- twelve hours without a stopover if they're long term, at least. At thousands of feet up in the air, you fidget, grumble, and tug at your sleeping mask, hopeful that the painful ride would nullify if you've had a chockfull of sleeping pills to swallow. (Especially if you're flying Budget.) Because you were so fixated with where you're going, your ride becomes a drag, not a carousel. Those excitements count for little until you've reached your destination. But that's what goals are: a long pursuit of something worthwhile, where it's easy to forget how fast you're moving in the air until you step outside; although, that's an impossible mission even for a Jodie Foster movie in Flight Plan.

Miles away from where you've started, goals are tricky if you're not patient. They become a sensitive gray area that cast more doubts than a beat that is to exhilarate, excite, and envision a pulsating bright future. We often ask ourselves why had we taken our goals in the first place, knowing that to give it up halfway is to plague ourselves with a guilt far more wrenching than tolerating a plane ride. How else do you explain avoidance behaviours? Like a fear of flying, which is to be a fear of failure, we're afraid of that uncertainty, that unknowingness we cannot predict, only to nag at us if we're never going to get there.

For one, it's not unlikely that nobody wants to go, say, across continents in their travel, it's just that places like the North Pole distances ten thousand kilometers from where we stand. Our goals, like the arctic holiday we can only dream about, would, therefore, mean as much when we do finally arrive. Imagine the North Pole! Imagine Alaska! Imagine the strange sights that would be John Green! If only we could give ourselves that chance to jump off the deep end and chase those goals. If we deviantly clung on and maximized our means to test our patience, no matter how begrudgingly they were to tide us over, goals aren't that cumbersome if we were patient. Goals are beautiful places we could go, if we were enduring.

Just a semester ago, I was miles away from home in a plane. And looking out of the window, incredulous at the adventure and sights I were to see on my private trip, it sent my blood rushing, at first, looking down at nitty details that dotted my country as I were up in the air. It gave me a sense of power, to be lifted across as I loomed largely over the landscapes. I felt brave, like there were so much to see if I kept looking down, that the enthusiasm captured would continuously leave me breathless up till I reached my destination. Though, at midway, I fell asleep, and forty minutes later, fidgeting in my tight spot, grumbling at how long the journey was taking, I was reminded of those trips I used to enjoy, unending in its ride: I began to see toddlers as cabbage dolls, snorers as as indicator to plug in those headphones, my nightmare neighbour who wouldn't stop hugging as a needy friend. Fearlessness, resilience, and patience, I had all the means to hold it out till I've arrived. I would be free, hence. And then I conquered.