I usually prefer the aisle seat if I can choose it on a flight.
It’s always seemed more practical, more…convenient.
But yesterday, on a short-hop flight, I was given a solo seat–one that was both an aisle and a window on this particular regional jet.
I was traveling alone, and since it was such a short flight, it wasn’t worth pulling out my laptop to do some writing.
So I did something I hadn’t done in a very long time: I just looked through the window.
And it hit me.
I’ve always been in awe of flight. While I learned the physics behind lift, it’s never seemed intuitive that such a heavy steel tube would be able to fly.
But that wasn’t what had me marveling.
Instead of looking inward from my traditional aisle seat, I was looking outward—and the terrain below felt like an oversized map coming to life. I opened my phone’s map app and spent the flight matching what I saw on screen to what was actually below me. The digital and the real, perfectly aligned.
Someone alive just 100 years ago, taking their first flight, would never have chosen the aisle seat. They’d never have stopped gawking.
Why have I lost that sense of wonder? Why do I treat flying as time to burn until I reach my destination?
A century ago, people would have paid dearly for even a few minutes of this perspective. I owe it to them—and to myself—to look out the window.
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