A letter from an aeroplane. I like writing these from up here. Not least because it keeps me awake: Sleep is calling, but the trolly with stale bread and camembert (thank you, Air France) is inching its way, arm-rest by arm-rest, down the aisle. I am staying awake for it.
Moments ago, the pilot poked the beak of our plane through the clouds above Charles de Gaulle. We’re headed towards a pale yellow horizon; out of the rain and the grey and the dank, into heaven (or something alike).
The woman next to me blatantly has her nose sticking out of her face mask, despite (or because of) the cabin crews protests. “Mamwazelle, it izz agains’t de loorree, mamwazelle…de loorree, mamwazzz…” I’ve got involved and offered some advice: twisting the ear hoop keeps the mask firmly up (my nose fights for freedom, too, I say). She basically tells me to F off*. Well, Merry Christmas to you, too.
It doesn’t escalate. All this racket, yet we’ll all be mouth-out sticking camembert into our faces with our fingers in a moment. We’ll be breathing over one another like an asthmatic choir singing at altitude. No one will say anything then. I understand both the pro-mask and the pro-face perspectives, but I think pro-mask should win out in a closed tube, like this plane.
The year is nearly over, and it’s soon time for a long existential post about how this year has been. I did this last year, and writing it is a delight—especially where there are many known unknowns. Globally, the giant known unknown that everyone (including me) pretends they know about is covid. Suddenly, I feel there is optimism in the air. Perhaps I’m alone in feeling it… But where’s the whiff from? From this and this, mainly.
So, the annual review is an activity I love. Introspection, done right, is good for the soul. By “right”, I mean not done too extensively. Dive too deep, and you end up like Camus’ nihilist—what is the point in anything? The lesson here is to be shallow with it. Question your workout routine, not your 30-year marriage; the colour of your wallpaper, not your home country.
A bit of annual reviewing helps us understand who we are because, in doing the write-up, we decide what we think. And, after all, we are what we think we are. If we can work out what we believe, we become better friends, lovers, brothers, babes and blokes. Incidentally, listening to ourselves makes us more individualistic and rebellious. We acutely feel the “I” from the “we”, the “me” from the “they”. Inevitably, this makes us worse citizens, less accepting employees, and more entrepreneurial (or so I choose to believe), but who wouldn’t want that?
The frameworks I’ve used for my review are linked below. They are great. I really recommend doing something, even if it’s a couple of lines of retrospection. It’s worth its weight in crypto, which doesn’t weigh much at all but equates to rather a lot.
https://www.shaanpuri.com/posts/my-new-years-resolution-framework
and
Anyway, have a wonderful Christmas. Please, from this sentence, feel the warm, loving festive feeling I’m sending to you and your family from this air-conditioned pipe thousands of feet in the air.
Please send me a picture of your most disappointing present. Remember, it reflects your personality. If you get socks, it’s not just that it’s a lousy present, it’s because you are now the type of person who receives socks. This, of course, is a critical data point in your annual review.
Live well,
H
*I’ve turned the brightness right down and hope she can’t read this.
PS. Yes, I sent this letter on a Saturday, not Sunday, which is out of the ordinary and must be quite a shock. I hope you were sitting down when you got the notification. I wanted to wish you xmas day on the bloody day, didn’t I.