Published: October 26, 2026
A few days ago, I flew a long-haul flight from Liberia to India via Ethiopia. Six hours on one flight, four hours on the ground, six hours on another flight. Flying itself made me think about a lot of things – space, time, and mind.
By Layli Maparyan, Ph.D.
Taking off, one is on the ground. Whatever it is like on the ground there – clean, dirty, beautiful, ugly, peaceful, not peaceful, mixed – that is what it is. That is where you live or that is where you are visiting. It is one environment, one world, one universe. It is your terrestrial norm. If you want to leave that place for the sky, you must speed up very fast and exert considerable energy to break free of the ground and rise. You will not get there by just looking upward at the clouds or simply imagining a locale far away. Considerable energy must be expended to get where you want to go – energy and, frankly, resources.
Once you are in the plane and rising, you will likely pass through “weather.” If there were clouds overhead when you were on the ground, you will pass through them in the airplane. You will look out your window and see what’s inside those clouds, whether rain, wind, lightning, sleet, snow, even a hurricane or tornado, or sometimes just moisture. Clouds look so peaceful from the ground, but once you are inside them, you see what weather is really all about. Some of that weather will rock the plane and buffet it about, and it may scare you if you are not used to it, if you are faint-hearted, or if you don’t trust the pilot. You may wish you could turn around and go back, but it most cases the pilot is not going to turn around and go back. Generally, if it’s very bad, he or she is just going to explain what’s happening in a calm voice and tell you to buckle your seat belts. It’s up to you and maybe your traveling companions to calm yourselves down and use whatever strategies you have at hand.
The pilot is not worried because he or she knows that just past the clouds – just above the clouds – is the clear blue sky. That is the fun part, the free part, the beautiful part, the enjoyable part. They call it “cruising altitude,” usually 30,000 feet above the ground or higher. From that vantage point, you can look down on the “weather” you went through with the eyes of a dispassionate observer or curious scientist, with an attitude of fascination and inquiry rather than fear, or you can even forget about it because it is behind you and you are mentally free to focus on something else.
Some planes, particularly the smaller ones, can’t rise that high and are forced to maintain cruising altitude inside the “weather.” Those planes struggle against the winds and the bumps and it can be like a genuine roller coaster ride. A skilled pilot can still get everyone from point A to point B, but it often requires a good deal more reassurance and management of the conditions inside the plane. “Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize that we will have to suspend cabin service due to weather. We apologize for any inconvenience.” “Ladies and gentlemen, please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts. Please suspend use of the lavatories until we pass through the turbulence.” “Folks, I’m afraid we’re going to have to circle the airport until the storm passes and we can safely land.” Sometimes the landing itself is quite risky and scary. These are the kinds of flights that make the faint-hearted swear off flying and give the seasoned traveler stories: “Remember that flight when [insert terrible flight experience here]…”
Then there is what we call invisible weather. Sometimes the biggest, most durable planes cruising in the bright blue skies above the clouds encounter a powerful and unexpected wind gust that throws them off balance. “Out of nowhere” it comes, sometimes forcing the plane to descend rapidly many hundreds of feet, feeling to the passengers like a free fall. Often this happens over the ocean or over vast mountain ranges where the weather can be harder to predict. Even the pilots are taken by surprise. But, of course, they are skillful and generally navigate everyone to safety, physically and psychologically. Thank God for them, I always say!
From flying we can derive many life lessons. First, to get somewhere different than where you are, you have to know where you want to go and know the route or travel with someone who does; you can’t just wish it or talk it. You have to exert considerable energy and sometimes expense to make the journey, which typically requires pre-planning and sacrifice. Once you depart, you realize that reality is organized in layers, each with different attributes: ground level (familiar but limited), the stormy layer (filled with churn and struggle), and the free zone (relatively carefree and enjoyable most of the time). You can move amidst them and are not stuck in any one, although some are harder than others. Importantly, each has its own unique risks, and none is 100% free of trouble.
What might be a bit more subtle of a point is that you can decide where you want to live mentally; you can choose your mindset, regardless of which scenario you find yourself in. You can choose to live on the ground and never fly and keep your mind at ground level, you can choose to live in the storm, always churning and struggling to survive, or you can choose to live in the blue sky zone, calm and composed and enjoying life from the proverbial birds’ eye view. Most of us probably move between all of these across the course of our lives, or even across the course of a year, a month, a week, or a day. But the most important fact is never forgetting that we can choose. Mind over matter! As my grandmother oft repeated, “Your attitude determines your altitude.”
Another key lesson from flying is the importance of the pilot. Planes are flown by pilots – at least one, but usually two or more. Pilots are highly trained and tested and must complete many hours before they are qualified to carry passengers, before others’ lives are entrusted to them. Very few of the passengers on a typical commercial flight know how to fly a plane. In the absence of a trained and knowledgeable pilot, they will never reach the skies or manage a disaster in the skies. Thankfully most planes have a plainclothes pilot or two flying on personal business who can take the helm in an absolute emergency. But for the bulk of us, the pilot is how we get there, from Point A to B. Yes, we could have walked; yes, we could have biked; yes, we could have taken a car or a bus or a train or even a ship; yes, maybe even a helicopter. But, in today’s world, most of us opt to fly when we want to go far, fast.
In the interest of completeness, it’s worth noting that pilots themselves rely heavily on air traffic controllers. Most passengers don’t give a second thought to those experts in the towers who are keeping track of all the airplanes and making sure none of them collide. An important part of the analogy!
As we think about the University of Liberia and where we want to go, where it is possible for us to go, and how we would like to get there, let us consider that our university is like an airplane filled with passengers. We are making liftoff – which takes considerable energy and resources – and we are passing through “weather” and we will eventually hit blue skies. But our ability to accept liftoff and keep our seatbelts buckled during the storms until we get to the blue skies where we are headed will be key to the smoothness of our flight. We must always be careful not to hijack our own plane or otherwise cause our jet to tank. We can think of our national development plan, the AAID, as our air traffic control giving us the instruction to “reach Top 300 in Africa” status. That is where we are heading, despite any weather. And this final destination is so glorious – so worth our efforts – that we will all join each other in celebration once we arrive!
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