“The path is unchartered. It comes into existence moment by moment and at the same time drops away behind us. It’s like riding a train sitting backwards. We can’t see where we’re headed, only where we’ve been.” When Things Fall Apart – Pema Chodron
Probably not what she had in mind, but Chodron’s comments about “riding a train sitting backwards” made me think of the now long gone “lounge seating” that was on Southwest Airlines planes for a quarter of a century but has been phased out as they retired planes – two sets of three seats, one set facing forward, one backwards. The backward facing seats where against the bulkhead, so they didn’t recline. Southwest officially called these “lounge seats,” which might fit because I am sure the alcohol consumption of passengers in those seats was double that of other seating positions. Still, frequent fliers knew them as the “party seats.” A flight attendant once told me that they were “the most loved and hated seats on the plane” and that seemed correct to me, for both flight attendants and occupants. The seats held an odd collection of elderly folks, people with mobility issues (the party seats were located in the front of the plane, but also in the middle) very tall folks, and (by experience) people who wanted to look fellow passengers in the eye while they (the talkers, particularly tall talkers) drank and engaged in incessant monologues poorly disguised as conversations. Many a life story was shared from those seats in the short hops Southwest was so famous for. Clearly, I was not a fan of those seats, particularly the ones that required you to sit facing rearward .
But I digress. My point was that all these other issues aside, there was an uneasiness in riding “backwards” on a plane, particularly on takeoff, when inertia was forcing you toward the person in the forward-facing seats and you hoped your seatbelt held. But Chodron’s analogy to life never occurred to me as another reason I hated those rear-facing seats. She is right, of course, those seats imitate life — life is like riding sitting backwards – “We can’t see where we’re headed, only where we’ve been.” While reality, that is unnerving. Particularly if (throat clearing) you are one of those people who has this persistent crick in the neck from trying to look ahead, worrying about what is coming up.
So there’s the sitting next to old folks (of which I am now one), people in casts, and talkative people who are drinking, but there’s also, at least subliminally, the reality that we face life with our backs turned. And maybe that, as much as anything else, explains the increased alcohol consumption in those seats.
It occurs to me... 