Ah, how depressing – all of the comments explaining it away. “There’s nothing to see here, move along. No flying today.” One comment says we fly because we see birds and want to be like them. But we see elephants with their trunks, spiders with their webs, beavers with their dams. Yes, we copy these things, take the core ideas and build them into our technologies. But they are mere tools, not paths to ecstasy.
Flying is different. It is the very essence of freedom, of grace and transcendence. Even the word “flight” conjures magic. I think that in some way the dream of flight suggests an eternal childhood, a notion of living forever in a state of innocence. J. M. Barrie knew exactly what he was doing when he had Peter teach this particular skill to the Darling children.
In the TV series Heroes everyone has a super power. But only Nathan Petrelli is the man who can fly. In some ways he is the most contradictory character. Everything about him suggests the cynic, the man who does not believe. And yet, he is the man who flies. The casting here was brilliant, exquisitely on point. Adrian Pasdar is a perfect example of what I call “Alan Rickman casting”. In other words: “I am suave and rakishly good looking, yet my eyes are too close together, so you suspect that you cannot quite trust me, and there is very little chance that I will end up with the girl.”
And yet, he is the man who flies. Unlike the other heroes, his particular super power generally leaves him near naked, embarrassingly vulnerable, unable to explain himself. When faced with a crisis, all he can really do is leave. Of course Nathan is not the cold-hearted cynic that he at first seems to be. How could he be? He is the man who flies. For all of his longing to be the man of power, the most grown-up of grownups, his destiny is to channel innocence.
I think we should not dismiss such ideas too blithely. Yes, of course they are archetypes, mere phantasms, creatures of the imagination. But they are within us, and they are a kind of music – music that on some level we all share. And I think we need to be able to hear them sing.
I wonder how it’s even possible for us to have a first-person dream of flying when all we’ve ever experienced is watching other things fly. Some of my favorite dreams have been of looking at illustrated books. In the dream, I turn a page, and there’s a beautiful illustration of undersea creatures, filling the page with incredible composition and detail. Somehow, in the instant I turned that page, my mind was able to paint a beautiful work of art with a skill far beyond my own. The next page, and there’s something new, just as exquisite. All that creation, without the slightest bit of conscious effort on my part. It’s like receiving a personal handmade gift.
I flew in a small plane once, and that was fun, but the closest I’ve been to real flying was riding my bike down hills no-handed in Kanazawa.
I do not dream very often of flying, except when I am a pilot on a very big aircraft 🙂 (I know, totally weird). But it’s funny how your description of flying is accurate 🙂 And yep, you cannot really feel it in powered aircrafts, but only in gliders. No fear of crashing, every move is so natural. Everything is very quiet and you just follow the up-winds to go nowhere in particular 🙂
hey trapsetter!
you can’t just ask us why people fly, and then when we offer reasons, say we offered reasons explaining it away.
Sally, I am completely at fault here. I had meant to ask why flying dreams can exert such a strong emotional pull on us. But I realize now that is not what I asked in the first posting. You and Andy did indeed answer the question that I actually posed. Sorry for the mistake, and I hope you will both please accept my heartfelt apologies.