In the last weeks, I spent an unusually large amount of time in transit. From moving across half the width of Germany to flying back from Tbilisi after an off-site, which took me door-to-door a casual 12 hours (including the 30 minutes I walked in the rain back home because I couldn't be asked to wait for a bus, nor did I feel like taking a taxi in this economy).

It got me thinking.

About the presentation by Rory Sutherland, I watched one year ago on YouTube, wondering whether we're too impatient to be intelligent.

About the hyped billionaire VCs posting about how SpaceX will radically reduce transit times, going from San Francisco to Tokyo in minutes instead of hours.

About how we think in goals and absolutes, and the value of the journey to get there usually isn't accounted for.

As in the joke about how this overnight success was really years in the making.

Is it pointing to something larger in our culture that the only direction we know is faster?

To what end, then, friend, if all our lives end in death and demise? Even the ambition to live forever, may be just another face of the death instinct.

We dream of beaming ourselves from one place to the other, never stopping to wonder whether that's even desirable.

When we discuss how to fix rails and roads, it's always about going places faster.

Rory Sutherland thinks that this is because we want to win arguments, so we pick what can be quantified - not necessarily what's human.

When you ask Google, you always get the supposedly fastest route, never the most scenic. Think about that.

If you're in a new place, isn't that what you'd sometimes want?

Leaving streets and rails behind, and taking off to fly away.

Isn't there something that makes the experience of flying weird?

You're far removed from the earth, one moment here, the next few hours on the other side of the globe.

It's an amazing invention, and without it, I quite literally wouldn't exist (I doubt my Dad would have used the Transsiberian train to get to Germany, even though it'd have made for an epic tale)

Still, I always sense the abstraction from space when flying to be a little disturbing.

If it's indeed true that the soul travels at the speed of walking, mine has long been left behind somewhere, trying to catch up.

Even on flights now, Wi-Fi has become so common that on every flight, you'll see people typing away on their devices—the same picture as on the train—never stopping to gaze out of the window and marvel at the beauty (or lack thereof) of the landscape passing by.

"When the airships had been built, the desire to look direct at things still lingered in the world. Hence the extraordinary number of skylights and windows and the proportionate amount of discomfort to those who were civilized and refined."

E.M.Forster in The Machine Stops

I've tried and given up working on trains, mostly because I realized there is no point.

It's a privilege to travel like that, so why not enjoy it, take this as a moment of transition, a thing that has value on its own even if it can't be captured as easily as reaching a goal.

As so often with me, this isn't just about how to not squeeze work into every second of your life whenever there's connectivity.

It's about how, in general, we might over-focus on destinations and underappreciate in-between spaces.

I used to have this naive belief that once I made a certain kind of salary, the good life would begin. Of course, that's a bit stupid, and I'd say that at large, my life has been pretty great even when I was broke. I just got inventive and found out about the 100 Yen happy hours and went to all the crypto meetups because it meant I wouldn't need to spend money on dinner.

Still, the point stands that there are a lot of people out there with their versions of "once XYZ, the great life begins."

But what if it doesn't work out?

Does it mean all the efforts are for nothing?

Of course not.

Yet we have a culture of to-do lists, of things that need to be completed, not halfway, not just a little—100%. Either done or they'll forever live on to haunt you. Maybe that's purgatory.

It's like being stuck halfway to a beautiful place.

You can either yell angrily at the train driver or... step out of the wagon, guard your eyes against the burning sun (we learned this from Camus), and curiously look around.

Once I figured out that there is no magical moment, that now as things are that's just my life... it could be dreadful, but really it's freeing.

It means you can figure out how to enjoy the in-between spaces. Sure, I might earn the amount I figured would change something when I was young and naive, but honestly, it comes with much more taxes and health care costs, so the need to ponder expenditures never went away.

Maybe one day I might be able not to have to think about money at all, but today isn't the day, and that's fine.

And also it doesn't matter because I've figured out how to make place for taking in the in-between spaces, the long train rides, the pondering an idea for many months until it's ready to be written down, accumulating random bits and pieces of information for so long... and noticing years later that they all fit together somehow, moving places that don't work out for me, starting and quitting new hobbies without regret...

"The totalization of Here and Now divests the in-between spaces of any meaning. Today's experience is characterized by the fact that it's poor in transitions."

Byung Chul Han in The Scent of Time

In the end, all the things I tried, all the goals I failed, all the dreams I had and didn't quite get there... even the attempts, the tears cried over failed relationships, the anger raging inside at experiencing power harassment first-hand, it all has become part of me.

Thanks for reading 💚

Cover image by Postwook, Space Travel: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cvr7O3kunbJ/