The Least Uncomfortable Position

Was thinking about plane travel. Long plane travel, when you're stuck in an airplane full of people, perhaps in a middle seat, for like 20+ hours. For me, this is horrendous. The noise, the crowd, the limited space for movement… it is just this side of physical torture. In order to survive that and not have panic attacks, I have to shut down large parts of my brain.

I have to find the least uncomfortable position. 

Because there is no comfortable position. None. 

All positions are uncomfortable. The entire ordeal from walking into the airport to walking out at the destination is one long uncomfortable position.

 

So I shut down major portions of my consciousness. Develop tunnel vision. Lock away all feelings that aren't physical, and do my best to dampen those as well. That's the least uncomfortable position, soul-wise. And then I work to find the least uncomfortable physical position as well.

 

I do not think about how much I want to get out of that plane. I do not think about how the press of bodies all around makes me want to shrink into a tiny ball and squeeze myself through whatever cracks I can find in the skin of that plane and get OUT. Even if out is 30,000 feet, it would be better. 

I don't think about that.

 

I don't think about the end of the trip. I don't think about any time that is NOT this time, because that would make enduring this time harder. 

The least uncomfortable position becomes the biggest goal, the most precious prize. I don't check the time. I don't check the distance we've come or have yet to go. I don't do anything that will remind me that there is anything other than this least uncomfortable position I have found, because it's the only way I can endure it. 

Making it eternal also makes it timeless. The ever present Now.

 

The least uncomfortable position becomes my base of reality. My bedrock.

 

My comfort.

 

And when the end of the flight is near? When the captain starts announcing what time we'll be getting into wherever it is and what the weather is like there and how the attendants will be coming around one last time to collect etc etc etc…?

 

I'm resentful.

 

I feel annoyance, grumpiness, hurt like a child having something they've latched onto for comfort, like a teddy bear, taken away.

 

Because in order to survive the trauma of the flight, I have made the least uncomfortable position my sole focus, and it's become that teddy bear. The thing I've latched onto for comfort.

 

I think prisoners must feel this way. Especially political prisoners, because they are experiencing injustice and they know it. They don't belong in prison, they have usually done nothing but insist that their government be accountable. Insist it does right by its people.

 

I wonder, tonight, if Aung San Suu Kyi is settling into her least uncomfortable position. I'm wondering if she had found this way of surviving the last time she was jailed. It hasn't been that long since then. She would probably be able to go right to that place. 

Wouldn't take any time at all to become the eternal Now.