If you look at the earth from 37,000 feet, you’ll see rivers. You’ll see the scars left by those that dried up, snaking through the deserts. Farmland will be divided into little squares by red gravel roads, and you’ll see the hovering cumulous cast shadows on fields. There will be glowing patches of city lights, ink blots that are lakes, and the white, serrated edges of mountains. From the stratosphere, it all makes sense. The world is orderly. Quiet. Beautiful. You can’t see the cars littering the highways or the emails cluttering an inbox, and you can’t hear the neighbors fighting or the kids crying, and you can’t feel the shame and disappointments gripping your throat and the fear that you’ll never realize your dreams or find love or ever crawl out from under your pile of debts.

At 37,000 feet, you can breathe. You can enjoy the reprieve, the short moratorium you’ve declared on your responsibilities and open up your mind to the possibility that your life can still mean more than the mistakes you’re trying to fix.

See the world through an airplane window.