The Night Before the Flight

Tomorrow I fly home from school for the holidays. I have a seven hour flight from Boston to San Francisco. The past few times I've made this trip, I had a layover in Denver. Tomorrow, it's just one leg of travel, so it presents an interesting opportunity.

What if I just do nothing on the plane? No movies, no music, no books, no entertainment at all. Have I ever sat and done nothing for seven hours straight? I don't know. On some level, it feels like it will be a challenge. On previous occasions I've felt myself start itching after 10 minutes of doing nothing. So how about 7 hours? What will happen?

At the same time, it would be somewhat troubling if I were to be unable to complete this goal. That outcome would give me good insight into my mind and my relationship with myself.

At best, it will be a spiritual experience. At worst it will be a really shitty and unproductive seven hours. It seems like the upside is worth it.

The great thing about a plane is that I can commit to this plan and then trap myself into doing it with no way out. I can't leave the plane, so I'll have no choice. Time to get specific. So here's the plan.

What is allowed:

1. My waterbottle
2. Any complementary snacks they serve on board
3. Getting up to use the bathroom
4. Looking out the window (I pray that I have a window seat)

What is not allowed:

1. My phone
2. My computer
3. Books
4. Notebook or paper
5. Food or drinks that I bring onboard
6. My deck of cards
7. Reading any of the on-board magazines
8. Sleeping
9. Looking at the screen on the seat in front of me
10. Watching what's going on on someone else's device

The plan is as follows: I will keep all of my non-allowed objects in my backpack, which I'll have on board. This makes my success criterion simple: I succeed by not taking anything out of my backpack. If I break and things start coming out of the bag, I will publicly ridicule myself in the second half of this article tomorrow.

The only other failure condition is that I fall asleep. I'll be getting up at 4am tomorrow, so I might be tired, and I need to be prepared for the temptation of dozing off. But sleeping would be cheating. I'll have a good amount of coffee in the morning to make sure I stay alert.

When I am on the plane, I will very likely feel boredom and unease. I will engage in the following four activites: 1. meditation; 2. writing poetry in my head; 3. thinking about anything that I find interesting; 4. Looking out the window

Maybe this will end up being way easier than I thought, maybe it will be way harder. I shall find out in approximately 9 hours.

After the Flight

The flight is over, and I now sit in SFO with sleep deprivation-induced blurry vision as I drink my third cappuccino of the day.

Once I entered the plane, I realized immediately that I would have a center seat. Not off to a good start. When I reached 35E, I was seated between two other college students who were already engaged in conversation. I was glad to be surrounded by friendly people, but it also became clear that I had made a major oversite in my planning by not factoring in the possibility of conversation with my neighbors. In total, I spent about an hour and a half of the flight talking with my fellow passengers. These conversations did help pass the time, so I'm not sure how I feel about their effect upon the mission. But I learned a lot about their school and lives, so no regrets.

Since the flight time was mercifully shortened to six hours due to incomprehensible aeronautical phenomena, I was left with the remaining 4.5 hours to be alone with myself. Not a short amount of time, but not as daunting as seven hours.

Fortunately, I was able to keep all of my entertainment sources in my backpack and I did not fall asleep, so both of my failure conditions were avoided. Overall, I consider the flight a victory, and I proved to myself that I am capable of enduring 4.5 consecutive hours of nothing but airplane noise.

Overall, it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I found that I oscillated between meditation and thinking. During the meditation stages, I consciously attempted to quiet my mind by observing my thoughts and feelings. During the thinking periods, I thought about different ideas, some of which were deeply entertaining to think about and some which were seemingly forced as a means of distracting myself from the boredom.

It was not as bad as I thought, but it was still unpleasant. There were a few times when I looked at the clock, looked away for what felt like ten minutes, and then saw that the clock had only moved 2 minutes. I was definitely not at peace during 60% of the flight.

When the flight ended, I was glad it was over. However, I am always glad when a flight ends regarldess of what I'm doing. I'd say that this experience was only moderately more unpleasant than flying with in-flight entertainment. Flying in general is uncomfortable for me, and the difference between the quantities of suffering is probably not more than that caused by a 15-minute walk through freezing, windy weather dressed in a light hoodie. Bad, but probably not the worst thing that happens in a week.

The best part of the experience was that I learned what my untethered mind tends to think about. Here are the things I remember thinking about, along with my estimation of the percentage of time I was occupied by the idea. The percentages probably don't add up to 100%, it's about the vibes not the exact number.

• Mixed Martial Arts (20%)
• Websites I want to build (15%)
• My dreams (5%)
• People in my life - past, present, and future (50%)
• Materialistic concerns (10%)
• Stress about school + work (20%)
• Jobs I want to have in the future (5%)
• Writing poety (5%)
• Paris (2%)

The most exciting part of the flight was when I discovered some really nice words for a poem I've been working on. I almost pulled out my notebook to write them down, but fortunately I was able to resist the temptation. I think I still remember the line.

Final assessment

This was worth doing. I learned a little bit about myself, and I gained more confidence in my ability to be alone with my thoughts. I earlier assessed that the best-case scenario was that I would have a spiritual experience. That did not happen. I would not consider today's experiment life-changing, but rather mildly helpful and interesting enough to be worth the lost productivity. Maybe I'll try it again if I ever fly to East Asia.