“Please fasten your seat belts and prepare for takeoff,” announces the tall flight attendant with 1980s style hair and makeup, as the propeller next to me begins to spin wildly. Aboard my second flight of the day, on my journey to visit my boyfriend at school, I fix my gaze on the small window next to me. The small plane rumbles as it begins to speed down the runway, and in a matter of a couple minutes, we are a few feet off the ground. Minutes later, we are overlooking the entire city of Philadelphia.
Each time I fly, I find myself awestruck as huge cities are suddenly shrunk down to fit in an 8-inch by 12-inch window frame. As the plane rises higher, everything below becomes smaller. The landscape looks like one of those fancy little set ups of a town in a toy store window. Little houses and yards concisely fitting together in perfect polygonal shapes outlines by streets. Trees from the local craft store dotting along the house, and sometimes separating neighborhoods of matching houses. A baseball diamond here, a football field and track there. In the distance, skyscrapers made of LEGOs. Lakes and rivers colored in ever so carefully with a blue marker. Toy cars slowly crawling along highways, with artfully designed circular exit ramps. As the plane moves away from the city, carefully sketched farmlands made of various shapes, yet all fitting together.
From the ground, only able to see the immediate view in front of us, we often are unaware or forgetful of what little magnitude our immediate world possess in comparison to the greater picture. On a regular day, our college campus appears to be what the world revolves around. Every problem in this view seems of great importance. Each adversity the “end of the world.” However, from the sky, as people race about their daily lives below, the passengers of the plane witness an almost stagnant existence. Individual people are too small to see, and cars appear so slow it is as if they are barely moving. The chaos and troubles of the people on the ground are nonexistent to the audience of the sky. A world that may appear tarnished with problems and wrongs appears practically perfect in every way from above.
As the plane soars higher and higher, it eventually breaks through the clouds and the city disappears. Below, nothing but fluffy white clouds. Ahead and above, a vast, endless blue sky. The happenings below are now completely irrelevant. The perfection of the city, obsolete.
When the plane begins to land, the city comes back into view again, and the structures of it grow and grow until we feel the slight bump of the wheels touching the ground. I instantly become part of the show I was viewing, and the wonderment of seeing all I know shrunk into a small frame is typically forgotten.
In considering the perspective given from the plane window, we must remember that in the scheme of things, we are insignificant. Of course, this does not constitute relinquishing all the efforts put into our own lives to make them fantastic; it does however, humble us through presenting the millions of other lives surrounding us, each facing their own triumphs and failures. Secondly, in a ground level world of hectic worries, it is important to recall the meticulously designed beauty that surrounds us. No matter how tragic life on the ground appears, a bird’s eye view presents astonishing beauty.
