As I write this I am soaring (at 12,500 meters apparently) above scattered clouds and vacant stretches of blue, through an endless sky and over a ceaseless ground.  Impossibly inhabited little towns litter a landscape carved with lonely roads that meander senselessly but purposefully in every direction.  The men that imagined them and made them are invisible, but the product of their labor is laid out for all to see, like some kind of Earth-sized ghost town, with nothing but old signs and structures pointing to those who once roamed its streets. But forgive me; I wax poetic over the ordinary.  This is, after all, just a business trip.

Yes, it is just one more hastily packed and prepared jaunt around the world that people in our day and age have made so commonplace.  It is always the same people on these trips: The Noise Canceling Headphone Man, who has finally found the ultimate weapon for protection against...; The Talk to Anybody Conversationalist, who seems to always find a seat next to the most fascinating person they have ever encountered; The Bitter Old Man, shouting brusque instructions and complaints at his flustered, wobbling wife as they hurriedly slog through the busy terminal; The Sleeper, that irritating person who has the seemingly impossible (and much envied) ability to begin sleeping at the moment he drops into an airplane seat, only to awake refreshed and eager, like some modern sleeping beauty, when the airplane wheels kiss the runway on arrival.  This usual cast of characters, combined with the rigorous routine of security, the airplane boarding protocol, the squeezing down the aisle past the person who needs to unpack 17 things out of his carry-on in order to stave off relentless boredom for just a bit longer (yet another character that could be listed above) -- all of these things are the necessary evils and hurdles inherent in travel.  Both commonplace and irritating, they make our trip so inconvenient and difficult that we are left wondering why we should have to be burdened with such things in order to merely get from one point to another.

But that isn't really true is it?  It was not so long ago that a trip like the one I am on now -- from Miami, FL to Toronto, Canada -- would have taken days.  Not long before that, this trip would have taken weeks or months and would have involved preparations that would make even the most avid list-maker weep.  Now, though, we blast through the air near the speed of sound, whisked along on the wings of one of man's most remarkable achievements -- coffee and pastries in hand, iPod providing a soundtrack to our journey -- covering a distance in a few hours that once took man centuries.  And what do we do in sight of such luxury and wonder? 

We bitch. Yes, we instantly take for granted all of the hardships, intelligence, and creativity of those who came before us (how many brave and intelligent men gave their lives trying to learn to fly?) and we look around with entitlement and expectation, demanding that we be delivered, with a minimum of hardship, to our destination.

The problem is one of perspective.  We look at the world through filtered glasses -- glasses that prevent us from seeing the whole picture, but that allow us to focus on the most pressing matters in our path with a minimum of distraction.  It reminds me of my days spent sitting in an orchestra, surrounded by people full of entitlement and expectation, but devoid of joy and appreciation for those around them, for the miracle of music, for the remarkable achievement of notes on a page and sound in the air.  This wasn't the case for everyone, of course, but it was far more common than it should be.

It also reminds me of driving on one of the isolated coast-hugging roads on the island of Maui and stumbling across a glorious pasture, surrounded by mountains opening up to the crashing waves of the impossibly blue Pacific Ocean.  In the middle of this pasture, which would fit virtually anyone's image of paradise, were two cows -- two cows that had to be the envy of just about every cow in cowdom.   And what were these cows doing?  Fighting.  I first stared in disbelief, and then laughed aloud at the realization that these cows had obviously never seen West Texas; they had no idea how lucky they were.  Then I thought of all the time I had spent driving past the deserted plains of Texas. I had seen all kinds of cows in stark, desolate places.  I had seen them in ones and twos, and I had seen them in thousands, yet in all that time, I had never seen them fight.  Not once.

Yes, it is all about perspective, and we must remember to hold onto that perspective if we are ever so lucky as to find ourselves living in the pasture of our dreams, the pasture carved in greens and blues. We need to enjoy and appreciate the things we have achieved, never taking them for granted, and never losing sight of those who are striving forward still, dreaming of that which we have found.

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