Wednesday, July 7, 2010

He flies through the air with the greatest of ease...

Just bought my plane ticket from Ireland home to Green Bay. Due to some difficulties with my credit card, and then a wait to see if prices would drop slightly, I didn't buy my ticket as early as I had initially intended. Consequently, there were none of my cherished aisle seats remaining (I don't like climbing over people when I need to leave to take a leak).

As I was complaining about this to my friend, she channeled Louis C.K. and his appearance on the Conan O'Brien show, where he rants about how everything is amazing and nobody's happy: "Did you fly through the air incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight, you non-contributing zero?...You're sitting in a chair in the sky."

Sometimes I think we need to look around and be amazed by the world around us and also the things we as a society have created. Sometimes when I'm on a plane I like to remind myself that even though I don't seem to be moving, my head (and the body attached to it) is traveling at over 500mph. It puts things into a slightly terrifying perspective.

If we don't have respect, or even fear, for the technology, if we take it for granted what technology both can and can't do, we have situations like what is currently happening down in the Gulf of Mexico.

Arthur C. Clarke once wrote that any suitably advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. In a way, we are living in a magical age. I hope we don't ever lose our wonderment, the sense that life can be something special.