I wrestled my backpack free from under the seat and unzipped its front. My fingers traced the pocket’s compartments, searching for the rounded contour of my AirPods. They found nothing. Except a rock-hard, half-eaten Larabar from trips past.
This is gonna be a loooonng cross-country flight.
I did have a steaming cup of black coffee and a window seat, through which I planned to enjoy the mountains, lakes, and rivers treadmilling beneath our plane. Then, somewhere over Phoenix, just as the caffeine kicked, cloud cover turned my scenic panorama into grey abyss. I lowered the window shade. My attention swiveled inside the fuselage.
It soon picked up a conversation from the row behind me. An early-twenties soldier with glasses and a buzzcut was sharing his experiences with an inquisitive older woman. In camouflaged fatigues, I’d noticed him board; he was so young, yet saddled with a maturity I couldn’t have understood at his age. After a brief lull, he said to the woman, “When I think about the people I went through basic training with… it makes me think we should all start learning Russian.”
And that is a declaration, I thought to myself.
In this present-day uncertainty, I’m tempted to make doomsday projections too. “The world’s burning,” I hear. “Everything’s going to hell in a handbasket,” I’m told. And maybe that’s right. Maybe our soldiers really are less fit than they ever have been. Maybe this all will lead to foreign occupation. I. Do. Not. Care. Because our world hasn’t gone to hell in a handbasket yet, and we can choose to do something about so many things.
Raising the window, I stared back into the grey, knowing the clouds always break. That much, I am certain of.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
P.S. I’ve been building a YouTube channel. I’d love your feedback (and a subscribe) if you have a few minutes to check it out.
