Our Artificial Environment
On my two recent 15 hour flights with Emirates Airlines I experienced something I hadn’t seen before on an airplane. They did an amazing job at creating a completely artificial environment for us. We left Houston on a Monday at 6 PM headed North/North East at well over 500 miles per hour. As we flew along at just under Mach 1, the sun (or rather the earth’s rotation) brought Tuesday hurling toward us even faster. In other words, we only had a few hours of daylight on Tuesday because we were flying toward the International Date Line. Thus, when we hit Dubai early Wednesday morning (Dubai time), our bodies were thoroughly confused as to what time of day or even what day it really was.
The good folks at Emirates Air did their best to help lessen that impact. Several hours into the flight, with daylight fast approaching outside, the cabin lights dimmed and took on a pink pallor, almost like a sunset. An hour later, the pink faded away and out came the stars. Yes stars–hundreds and hundreds of little lights scattered all long the roof of the fuselage.
It may have been 4 PM Tuesday outside, but it was midnight Monday night inside. Or at least it was supposed to be. A few hours later, as we needed to get ready to hit Wednesday in Dubai, the whole process reversed itself. We went back to a pink and even orange color–sunrise. And an hour later full cabin lights and breakfast, even though it was getting dark again outside.
Our airline hosts had done their best to create an artificial world for us, completely ignoring what was really happening all around us.
I’ve had a few days to process that experience and it has dawned on me (no pun intended) that we try to do much the same thing in our lives. We work very hard to create artificial environments that shield, protect and insulate us from what’s really going on around us.
Living with more than enough affords many of us the opportunity to mute the cries of those on the outside:
The cries from the oppressed for justice
The cries from the grieving for comfort
The cries of the spiritually lost for purpose, meaning and truth
The cries of the unborn for the chance to live
The cries of the orphan for a home
Our more than enough status enables us to stay busy enough, to turn the volume up loud enough, to be “important” enough or to just be distracted enough to not really notice what’s going on around us. We’re able to program in those prefabbed sunrises, sunsets and starry nights so that our worlds appear to be nice and tranquil and controlled and so we don’t notice the darkness that is just outside our artificial environment.
But friends, mark this–all the mood lighting in the world can’t protect us from the turbulence that is coming. Storms are brewing and no amount of free drinks, noise-reducing head phones and cozy environs can stop them.
Wake up. Turn off the automated light show and turn down the volume. Don’t let your relative wealth lull you to sleep. Turbulence is in the air and we’re way beyond a simple tightening of our seat belts.
You need to get in the game. You need to give your life away for something eternal. You need to know what you’re willing to die for if you’re going to know what to live for. You need to spend your money, time and energy for someone who can’t pay you back.
You (and I) need to answer the cries.
This plane is going to land soon. And trust me when I say that we’re all in for a huge shock when we see where we really are.
