Climbing

I had something of an odd moment today because I saw a plane.

I was sitting in the usual mid-day traffic at a stoplight on Mockingbird Lane, just a block from SMU's campus (my destination, of course), when I glanced up and saw a plane flying up from the horizon toward the infinite blueness of the sky.  Love Field (the smaller of the two Dallas airports) is only ten minutes further down the road, so seeing planes near campus isn't really unusual.  By its blue body and orange wings, I could easily identify the plane as one belonging to Southwest Airlines.  You always picture airplanes being white because that's how they look in picture books as a kid, and it was weird to think that when I fly on Southwest, I'm inside this giant blue and orange thing.  Then for some reason, I started thinking about when I traveled in Europe on Ryanair, a super cheap Irish airline boasting bright yellow interior accents with dark blue seats upholstered in bad fake leather and stewardesses in bright blue floor-length suits with hair pulled into a bun that is more suited to the 1960s than the 21st century.  It's not the epitome of class, but it gets you where you're going for cheap.

And then, something strange happened...sitting in my still-dented car on a Texas street, I watched this plane fly into the sky and felt as though I was watching the plane that once carried me from Paris to Ireland.  It was almost like I could sense a tiny version of myself inside that distant plane, flying off to places unknown without a care in the world and only excited anticipation of the imminent adventure of discovering a new place.

Maybe you think I'm weird.  You should.  It was a weird moment.  I can't really describe it well...in a way, it was like an out-of-body experience.

Sometimes thinking about my past blows my mind.  It's weird to me to think, in my present life, that this is just one of the many different contexts that my life has taken on throughout the last 22 years.  The feet that carry me wearily across Bishop Boulevard for class are the same feet that took me down the Rue Faubourg-Saint-Honore in Paris, that treaded the length of the Santa Cruz wharf, that carefully teetered across the rocky coast of the Irish Sea, that climbed the steps of the Colosseum.  On the climbing theme, my feet have managed to propel my body to the top of Notre Dame Cathedral, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Sacre Coeur Basilica in Paris, the Brugge Belfrey in Belgium, the Jockey's Ridge sand dune in North Carolina, the Oratoire Saint-Joseph in Montreal, the top of a waterfall in Yosemite Valley, the tip of Mont Saint-Michel, and the top of Blarney Castle, among other things.

Somehow, the view from all these places was better than the views that I got from taking elevators.  Seriously.  The view of Paris from the tip of the Eiffel Tower is a let-down because you can't SEE Paris's most characteristic landmark when you've taken an elevator to stand on top of it.  And though the view of Dublin from the Sky Bar in the Guinness Storehouse is nothing to sneeze at, it's not the most remarkable of the views I've seen.

No, there's something about relying on the strength of your own two feet.  It's a special moment when, right when you think that you're going to keel over in the middle of a 14th century spiral stone staircase and die a slow death being trampled by tourists and religious pilgrims, the repetitive turning of the steps suddenly gives way onto open air and reveals the intricacy of a city skyline spreading out below you.  It takes your breath away...or, at least, whatever breath remains in your lungs post-climb.  The difficulty of the journey is released and forgotten in the reward, anguish lost in awe of the beauty that lays before you.  The Notre Dame Cathedral is particularly good at yielding this effect.  The stone gargoyles that looked so small from the ground now join you in a height not far off from your own, scowling down at Paris while you look out at the city in admiration.  It's almost like those gargoyles have spent too much time up there...maybe if they left for awhile, they would remember the beauty of the view when they returned.

My feet have accomplished marvelous things, overcome countless obstacles for the anticipated reward of yet to be disclosed wonders.  But somehow, this year, the walk across Bishop Boulevard, an entirely flat journey from the parking garage to the lecture halls of the theology school, has seemed horribly difficult.

And that is what I started thinking about when I saw that plane flying unafraid and uninhibited overhead.

During my time in Europe, I thought that hopping on a plane to another country was nothing.  There was no fear, only excited anticipation of exploring the unknown that awaited me as soon as my plane touched down.  I hopped off to Ireland and Italy at the drop of a hat, decided on a Monday to go to Belgium on the following Friday.  I trusted myself to be able to figure things out as I went along, and to be okay with that.  On all my trips, the only things planned in advance were the plane/train tickets, airport shuttle/bus tickets, and hostel reservations. Every other aspect of the trip was open for suggestion.

In all rationality, my European escapades were much more daunting than my present situation in graduate school.  Really, grad school simply requires me to show up, pay attention, take notes, do homework, and pass tests.  I've been doing that successfully for the last 17 years of my life.  The Celia that arrived at a downtown Roman train station a few minutes before midnight and successfully made it to her hostel alone and unscathed to meet up with her friends, the Celia that accidentally got on a bus to Iverkeithing when she meant to go to Edinburgh (about a 40 minute difference), the Celia that got off the bus in Flemish-speaking Brugge and discovered that she didn't have the hostel address, and managed to survive these and other travel fiascos can certainly manage to survive two and a half years in seminary.

There's a Bible verse that says "wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction...but small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life."  I've been in some narrow staircases that yielded much more worthwhile views than those attained by way of a spacious elevator.  I think life is like that.  Just because it's easy to get somewhere in life doesn't mean that you'll love the view of the world that you'll wind up with.  There's no guarantee that the difficult moments will lead to something beautiful...but the difficulty of the journey will certainly make you appreciate the end result more.  Right now, graduate school is my 14th-century spiral staircase, turning and turning and making me dizzy with the unique confusion that comes from repetition and the vague frustration of thinking the end is near only to keep turning around and around.  But the sunlight that peeks over those last stairs is so much more valuable to me than the vast wealth of sunshine that spreads freely across the ground.

Out of struggle comes beauty.

I'll leave you with these words from "Enchantment Passing Through," one of my favorite songs from the musical Aida.  I feel as though, indirectly, they relate...they convey the attraction of the unknown that comes with traveling, and yet manages to evade our everyday existence.

To sail away to half-discovered places,
To see the secrets so few eyes have seen,
To see moments of enchantment on our faces,
The moments when we smile, and those between.


If I could leave this place, then I'd go sailing
To corners of my land where there would be
Sweet southern winds of liberty prevailing,
A beauty so majestic and so free.


There'd be no ties of time and space to bind me,
And no horizons I would not pursue.
I'd leave the world's misfortunes far behind me.
I'd put my faith and trust in something new.