Counting Planes

Image credit: Crooked Flight

I developed the habit of counting landing planes after Alexey.

We would be sitting by the beach near the airport, counting each and every landing plane, and he would be blurting something like “Do you think how many Jakartans could possibly get on that plane? I bet some of them would be stuck next to me tomorrow in Canggu’s shortcut traffic jam”. We didn’t share a connection, but we shared the same cynicism towards Jakartan, or maybe the same loneliness.

I’d rather spend time with him counting planes than listening to him talking about crypto and the whole concept of blockchain economy.

There’s a strangely soothing feeling about counting planes, or staring at the sky in general. But in every counting, I made a conscious mental note to notice every flying plane that bent its direction towards the ground. No planes went unnoticed.

1, 2, “Look, another one is coming!” Alexey would be frequently shouting, a little bit too enthusiastic.

That’s basically a practice of mindfulness for someone who claimed to hate mindfulness to the core.

And I found myself still doing that even long after Alexey left on another landing plane in St. Petersburg.