Flight of Life

I am travelling again this weekend. This time to Amsterdam, followed by London. Over the last three years I have travelled to, and visited 8 cities, making up a total of 34 cities since the first time I took the airplane in 1980, when air miles and loyalty programmes were unheard off. Sometimes I jokingly nicknamed myself Ibn Battuta to credit the air miles I have accumulated over the years.

I still remember my first long distance flight to Paris in the early 80s, on Malaysian Airlines Boeing 747. The return flight from London was truly a joy and perhaps as a young traveller, I immediately developed a romance for air travel.

After two decades of travelling, for work, vacation and visiting parents when my family and I took residence in Liverpool, I am beginning to feel the aches and pains after long flights, not to mention the stress and anxiety of excess baggage, lost luggage and missing connections.

There is an inverse relationship between my romance with air travel and the air miles I collected from my travels. There were instances when I felt enriched by the flight - through the articles found in the flight magazine, the movies offered, the food served and the conversation with the unknown passenger seated next to me. But these were rare instances. Most often, I had to live with uncomfortable seats, poor quality food, and plastic (and tiny) fork and knife to wrestle with the piece of meat or fish.

There are not many things one can do on the plane, quite apart from reading, watching the movies, walking up the aisle, sleeping or engaging in conversation with other passengers. I often wondered how I managed to survive long flights, including the one that took 23 hours to Washington DC, when I went on the US International Visitors Program. It will interesting to note and list the things I (may) do for the 13 hours of flight to Amsterdam, to reflect whether it was time well spent or otherwise. Like previous travels, it will be a spontaneous response on flight rather than a planned list of "things to do".

Interestingly, I have made several life decisions on the plane during my travels. One example, was the decision to pursue my postgraduate study, when my wife and I were in the plane to London for our honeymoon. Some years later, during the flight to Toronto, I decided to do research in Cybernetics for my PhD. Other than decisions, I have also acquired knowledge and insights of culture, society, history and civilisations through conversations with fellow passengers, the inflight magazine and documentaries.

Air travel is a perfect condition to experience absolute dependency to Allah, our Creator. It is during flight - takeoff, landing and airborne we accept the reality of our weak and powerless existence. That we can do nothing to change what may have been destined to happen. And thus we pray and hope that it will be a safe flight throughout.

One can only be a new person after every flight from the prayer and renewed acknowledgement that Allah has the power over all things.