In it together

It occurred to me whilst sitting in the departures lounge how very strange most of us looked as we prepared to board... Families, going on long awaited, and presumably much needed breaks, looking frantic and stressed.  Those travelling on business mostly looking mildly irritated that, like the rest of us, they would not be turning left as they got onto the aircraft.  I felt like a 'fly on the wall', quietly sitting there, observing this extraordinary scene.  

It's half term.  There are likely 400+ of us getting ready to spend nine and a half hours together.  We will, all of a sudden, be sharing a space and the oxygen within it as we cruise at 35,000ft.  Yet, beyond the members of our immediate party, we are unlikely to know another's name at the end of the flight.  On thinking about it, this strikes me as peculiarly strange.  We are, for the time that we are airborne, a community, and yet few beyond the cabin crew perhaps are thinking along these lines.  I wonder what difference it might make, were we to do so...

How strange is this combination of proximity and separation. 

 That ground - seconds away - thousands of miles away.  
Charles A. Lindbergh

The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing.  The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together.  

Bill Gates