I OFTEN think about how much my mind is like an airplane. There’s the pilot who is focused on navigating the plane through the clouds and away from trouble. There’s the stressed-out working woman who can’t stop thinking about her responsibilities. There’s the crying child in the corner who has no idea what’s going on. What the child doesn’t understand is that there’s a lot going on, and as all of this is transpiring while she’s stuck 36 thousand feet in the air—who’s flying the plane?
Everyday, I wake up to the same ceiling. I reach for my phone to check the time and it’s a few hours past noon. I roll out of bed and go to the kitchen to make myself a cup of black coffee that has way too much sugar in it.
After a few sips, I make my way to my laptop to work. From there, I click, type, and scroll until dinner time. At the table, my attention is split between my food and my family trying to spark a conversation, then afterwards, it’s back to the screen.
I continue to work until sunlight peeps through my blinds and I decide to go to bed just to go through the same routine all over again. At this point, I rely on muscle memory to get me through the day, barely being conscious. If you ask me what I had for lunch yesterday, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.
As work piles up, I find myself stuck in the process of constantly going into autopilot mode just to save myself from the horrors caused by my own consciousness. Despite getting things done half-consciously or with minimal effort, I find peace knowing I once again survived being helpless while driving an airplane plagued by never-ending turbulence. What matters is that I get things done, right?
In times when I have a grip on reality, I look back and wish I hadn’t been the way I was, going about my day mindlessly. Days felt rushed, I was lost in time, just taking in and passing on whatever fell into my hands. I dreaded going to bed because it just served as a reminder that another day of the same routine was coming. As time flies, I realize that so much more is going on around me than what I make myself aware of.
Living on autopilot barely got me through those days of exhaustion and wanting to give up. Hours, days, and weeks flew right by, and I was just getting more numb by the second. I stayed tired when what I really wanted was to get out of the trance I was in. I wish I had savored the scrambled eggs I whipped up when I woke up for breakfast without thinking about the things I had to do later in the day. I wish I had remembered what song I was singing along to when I almost slipped in the shower. If flying a plane this high up in the sky was as beautiful as the way I thought it would be, I’d be flying forever. I just need to find romance in my everyday life.
Every now and then, I fall back into the pit of exhaustion and my mind goes into automatic mode. I wake up, work, eat, sleep, repeat. I unconsciously fall back into the routine that makes me fall out of love with life. Then something snaps me back into reality. Sometimes it’s food, sometimes it’s being in good company, but most times it’s when I’m staring at the same ceiling I wake up to everyday and finally feeling like I’m awake. Whenever I feel like I’m losing myself again, I just remind myself: A plane can’t fly without its pilot.
