We’ll Be On The Ground Shortly: An Exercise In Mixed Metaphors

After 16 hours have elapsed on the world clock, consumed by the passage of a mere three hour flight, with two re-bookings and innumerable queuings, I’ve accepted the reality that we humans are further fodder fueling that most ubiquitous of categorical imperatives identified today by the handle of “supply chain management.” We are fleeting cargo caught up in the complex, highly-taken-for-granted, fiercely unavoidable and wildly disruptable supply chain of air travel switchers and packets. We are each rigid steel containers, standardized in terms of carry-on allowed economy seats, filled to the max with scheduling details, baggage barriers, liquid limitations, not to skip over anxious anticipations and delineated expectations, which at some point must be relabeled as simmering annoyance, restrained anger and finally blunt acquiescence, assignation, resignation on the part of the just barely sentient, but perishable, irritable packets of personal data that we are unwittingly determined to be, as we make our way through the less-than-human demands and machinery of airline logistics. However selfishly important we each believe ourselves to be, the fact is, each of us is one of utterly millions of passenger/packages, packed into a gate/pallet, piled high on a skyway/crane, waiting on a tarmac/dock, waiting on a slot, waiting on a crew, waiting on a shuttle/transport, waiting on an algorithm, waiting on a pandemic, waiting on societal acceptance, waiting on individual responsibility, surprisingly completing the cycle begun and looped as an individual, the whole being greater than the sum of the parts when each part does its part. Duh.