In Defense of Keeping Your Airplane Window Shade Up
And you'd better believe we're taking pictures, too.
I’m not sure when we, as a society, decided we were too cool for air travel—how we became so blasé about being suspended over 30,000 feet in the air, soaring in this gravity-defying tube that will get us to any pin on the map in a matter of hours. It seems to me that we’ve lost our sense of awe and wonder, and there’s no greater evidence than the shuttered plane window. Far too often, I notice window seaters on flights renouncing their privilege, turning their heads away from the magic that’s unfolding right outside their periphery. And all I can think about this sight is bad vibes.
There are a few exceptions, I suppose. Takeoff or touchdown is prime time, and the blinding light that penetrates the duration of the flight warrants a shade coming down. Perhaps someone elected the window seat simply because it’s more conducive to sleep. Or they had no say, got relegated to one, and happen to have a fear of heights. Fair. But one excuse I will not accept is this air of fatigue concerning the art of travel—or, even worse—the performance of it.
The proof is in the pudding, and that pudding is TikTok. The kids are too shy to take it all in. One user recreates what it’s like to side-eye the window from an aisle seat, refusing to reveal the basic human desire to want to have a little look: “POV: tryna play it cool in the aisle seat landing somewhere scenic.” Another user writes, against a backdrop of classic, sunset-cloud iconography, “taking a picture/video on an airplane is so embarrassing like i swear i’ve flown before it just looks pretty.”
I understand that the perils of air travel can bring out the worst in us. I shake my head along with any disgruntled passenger who just got unnecessarily accosted by a TSA agent. I, too, drop my jaw when a customer asks, “How much is this Chex Mix?” at the checkout counter of Hudson News. I roll my eyes in unison with the seatmate who’s just been denied legroom by the horizontal napper in front of them. But we shouldn’t let these relatively small inconveniences get in the way of our ability to cultivate joy on the flight we’ve likely paid a lot of money for, en route to, or returning from, a new destination. How lucky are we?
To gaze out from a plane window is to celebrate a feat of human ingenuity; to witness a perspective that was, for millennia, inaccessible to mankind; to romanticize the beauty of crepuscular light as it befalls the rectangular, green patches of some flyover state. But, most importantly, to look outside of a plane window is to yearn. It’s a moment for us to meditate, to tap into feelings that can only be described by foreign words like resfeber and sonder, and to daydream about that sticky situationship (preferably to some dramatic track, like “Breakaway” by Kelly Clarkson).
So, my fellow window seaters, I ask that you turn your in-flight entertainment off for just a few minutes—you can watch Crazy Rich Asians literally anywhere else—and take a look at the sky. Be mindful of blocking the view with your head so that your neighbor can also take a look. Offer to take a picture for anyone who’s trying to snap one, nonchalantly. And while we’re at it, let’s bring back clapping for landings, too.