What Being a Flight Attendant Taught Me About the Nature of Reality
Existence is weird
I’ve been a flight attendant since 2015. The pandemic has made things interesting. Putting many of us out of work for a long time. It is a job with a lot of mystery and intrigue. The exotic traveler.
When I tell people I am a flight attendant one of the most common responses is, “ooo, really?! That sounds amazing!”
Many of us love traveling. Seeing new things. Meeting new people. Add a philosophical mind to the mix and it’s taken to a whole new level.
I became a flight attendant after moving to New York City from a small town in Idaho. A massive change would be an understatement. I was looking for work, and I remembered my ex-girlfriend’s mom was a flight attendant, and I wanted to do some traveling while I was still in my early 20s and not bogged down with anything else. So I decided to apply as a flight attendant.
I hit a stroke of luck, I applied to four airlines, and three of them got back to me for interviews. I went with the one that appeared to be the most interested in me. From when I applied to when I ended up at the training center was only four weeks.
In three months' time, I went from a small town in Idaho to New York City to Houston, Texas. I lived in several different states, traveled to 47 of them, flown around the world, and met countless people.
(Maybe) Being a Flight Attendant Should Be Mandatory
I’ve heard many people talk about the necessity to be in the service industry. Although flight attendants are safety professionals, most of what we are doing is customer service-related.
•dealing with upset passengers
•serving food/drinks
•doing our best to make everyone have a safe/pleasant experience
I would add that most people should be required to travel away from where they grew up.
Why?
Traveling requires you to observe all the different ways that being a human can manifest. When I traveled around the world, and even around the states, my perception of what it means to be human broadened exponentially.
I recognized for the first time the experiential nature of exploring all things different from what I grew up around.
All the conditioning that we pick up from our small circle of the world that “this is the way it is” goes right out the window when we allow ourselves to be open to the possibilities of human beings existing in different spaces.
I often imagine a world where we have the resources to have everyone in the world be a flight attendant for one whole year to experience the combination of customer service+travel.
Two of the biggest forms of developing patience, compassion, tolerance, and understanding that one can experience.
What would that do for people?
The more I traveled the more my beliefs were constantly shattered about “the way.” I met people from all walks of life. Each time I met someone new, the more confused I became about what it meant to be a human.
Then something occurred to me.
Every time you interact with another human being you are entering an entirely new universe
There is No “Right” Way to be a Human
All my traveling and interacting with others was a very humbling experience. I started to see how every individual person on this planet is experiencing the world in a completely different way.
One of my exes said it best whenever she would say, “you never truly KNOW a person.”
She was right, we don’t. We know a perception about the person. But how you experience love is different from everyone else. I will never know what an apple tastes like for YOU. Nor you anyone else you have ever met.
For me, traveling to all these different universes in the form of human beings provided one of the greatest epiphanies I’ve ever had.
My way is not the only way, and definitely not the “right” way.
So much of my suffering throughout life was about thinking my way of doing this whole human thing is the only way to do it. I was conditioned to believe that there is a right way.
That is not the case.
We are all exploring what it means to be human. None of us has THE answer, but we spend so much time trying to get others to accept our way.
Politics, race, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, where to live, how to eat, what clothes to buy, all of it! We cause so much separation simply because we project on to others our own experience, and get frustrated because they won’t accept it as their own.
Traveling Without Going Anywhere
Early I proposed that everyone in the world be mandated to become a flight attendant for one year. Like some kind of military draft, just without all the killing involved.
This isn’t a feasible solution for our current reality. However, that does not mean that we all cannot benefit from what travel provides. It is easy to see the different perspectives and ways of living when you are physically in a new location.
With the current state of the world physical travel has lessened. We can’t as easily go to a new culture. Or be around those who don’t speak the same language.
What we can do is learn to see that we are all just humans looking around wondering what all this is about. There is no need to create unjust separations because we fight over our ways.
Every moment of every day we can appreciate how we view the world and be taken aback with wonder at all the different ways life manifests itself through the eyes of a human being.
