How many times have you caught yourself daydreaming about getting away? I’m guilty of this. I’ll see a lone airplane carving white gashes into the blue heavens above and wonder where it’s taking the lucky passengers. In my mind, the daydream is always that the passengers are flying to some pristine island, with waters somehow both crystal clear and emerald blue. The waiters keep giving them an endless supply of pad Thai and cold watermelon. The swimming pool is right next to the beach. The walls of the house nearby are a spotless white stucco. There’s a large, comfortable bed with a realistic, life-sized picture of a forest of birch trees spanning an entire wall. The sun is always shining, and when the morning light covers the floor with burning rectangles, you realize that this is where you want to spend the rest of your life. Sun, sand, and sea are all you need to exist.

That might not be your daydream, but as an Oregonian, it is certainly mine. I’ve always had a fascination with everything airplane-related. Let’s take airports, the liminal space between where we are and where we could be. The food is highway robbery, seemingly marked up 300%. My favorite time to exist there is in the early morning, when I’ve jumped out of bed at 3 AM so I can taxi to the airport. I get there with my single suitcase in tow. The airport has giant, open spaces that call to me. The emptiness of the building feels like a merciful and intentional break before the tidal wave of stimulation that will wash over me in a new country. As a rule, I never worry about prices at the airport. To me, it’s a celebration that I’m there and I treat myself to whatever food I want. It’s the only time that I get McDonald’s (two Sausage Egg McMuffins and two hash browns) because I am so happy to be there. To me, the airport is the best part of any trip, whether it’s living in the Dominican Republic for a year and a half or a weekend trip to North Carolina. The airport is the embodiment of change, the physical manifestation of the fact that any problem I was dealing with at home is temporarily suspended. I’m suddenly free of everything that I once knew, and isn’t that cause for celebration?

I have a specific song that gets me in the right headspace to experience the full beauty of an airport. My Love (Majid Jordan Remix) by Drake is the song that gets me to truly soak up the moment in the airport. It’s a joyful experience to exist in that liminal space, knowing that you’re about to consciously embark on a new chapter that you get to write yourself. When I walk into an airport, I shed every single story about myself. My mind is blank–and my personality is blank too. I leave all my idiosyncrasies at the revolving door and simply float through the space as if I expect the airport to fill me with quirks throughout my limited time there. It’s an interesting experience–hands in pockets, small smile on my face, looking around at the carpet and food courts. I’ve never understood why some people need alcohol before they fly; isn’t the idea of shedding your story invigorating enough? I love the long lines, my sleepy wandering, checking my gate number on my boarding pass over and over again. I have one rule when I fly: never get on an airplane without sunglasses. I’ve purchased an ungodly expensive pair of shades right before my flight because I realized I had left my pair at home. At the airport, I’m in full anticipation mode, and that means that everything I experience is a joy.

Getting on an airplane is just as satisfying. I love the small, compact design of all the components where not an inch is wasted. I love the food on airplanes: chewy rolls, hot beef and potato stew, salads with dressing the consistency of syrup, butterscotch cookies. The only time I’ll have alcohol is if I’m flying to Europe or it’s free–which generally go together. I’ll have a glass of sour white wine or some champagne. I love sitting next to strangers and finding out what they do for a living.

And of course, I love the plane window. This is where I bring out my sunglasses and begin to cloud-watch. Gazing at a fragile landscape of water vapor, I leave my body and travel among the clouds. As we slice through the atmosphere, I feel infinite. My jaw drops at the stunning beauty of clouds that have no form yet have a shape. I marvel at the crisp juxtaposition between a pure blue sky and the white billows of a cumulonimbus. If I’m lucky, I’ll see another plane flying parallel to us. I even once saw what I can only describe as a UFO. I gain a literal 40,000 foot view of my life, where all the problems that I seem to be fretting over are gone. It’s just me and my butter pats on the tray table.

Of course, clouds are just one part of the picture. The other part, of course, is the land. August mountains stand tall with pride. Fresh rivers rush oceanward. A latticework of fields stretches to the delicate line where sky meets earth. If there’s one thing that I feel when I’m flying, it’s gratitude. With every breath, I get to experience the world from the sky, calmly accepting what happens in the world with every turn on its axis. With such a high view, the meaning of the events on the ground are stripped of their worth, and I can see so clearly just how small my problems are. No matter how the flight goes, I’m just happy to be there.

This feeling of limitlessness is possible on Earth. Meditation–the simple act of focusing on our breath entering and exiting the body–teaches us that no matter the external events, we will always have the breath. When I was going through an immensely trying breakup in the Dominican Republic, I repeated a phrase to myself: “No matter what happens, I will always have the sun on my face.” This doesn’t necessarily mean that the sun will always be shining on my face, but instead that I will always have the physical sensations that this world relies upon for global upkeep: wind, water, sun.

The reason that I’m so deeply passionate about meditation is because it teaches you that you can have limitless joy even in your darkest hour. It teaches you that you will experience pain, but experiencing pain will only be part of what you experience. The other part is a gentle, loving resignation to all that happens to you, paired with a deep acceptance and joy. When you let go of your grip on reality and instead move with how the events of the world move, you merge with the world and reality. I don’t need to travel to Europe to strip my life of meaning and accept what happens with a gracious heart. Travel can be an escape, a drug that nudges you to run from the problems you created. I’ve been addicted to the drug of running away when you make a mess, and it’s one of the hardest habits I’ve had to kick. Meditation helped me realize that being overcome by the problems in your life is the fuel for your practice. Travel, with its constant novelty, is wonderful in short doses, but when I made a lifestyle of it, my life became a series of snapshots eclipsed by the anticipation of the next great adventure. Observing the breath helped me realize that we are all traveling no matter where we are. That we can step out of the stories we tell ourselves. That our mistakes are the very thing that make us better humans. That growth sometimes doesn’t take the most direct route from point A to point B, but sometimes takes a detour as a plane crash into the ocean–after which the rescue boat slowly hauls you to your destination.

I’m so driven to spread the glory of meditation because it was one of the only things that helped me in the lowest points of my life (along with phone calls to family and a heavy dose of therapy). Meditation was what I clung to when my life fell apart twice, in a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language, had no friends, had no family, lived alone, and was deeply enmeshed in a toxic spiral of intrusive thoughts. Meditation was the way out of suffering, and it helped me like nothing in my life has ever helped me before. Meditation was there when I was crying, scared, alone, in a foreign country, with an impending hurricane. Meditation was there was I was angry, broken, heartsick, alone, in a foreign country, torn up over a romantic relationship that destroyed my ability to enjoy work. Meditation was there through the toxic coping mechanisms I developed as self-protection from the pain, when I felt so uneasy in my own mind that my skin was the last place that I wanted to be. Meditation helped me begin cross the fiery chasm of ego that nearly shattered me. Meditation was what I could always turn to in times of deep sadness and loneliness.

And through meditating continually, I learned to shave the edges off my own thoughts. I learned to observe what was happening in my mind. I learned to see my physical environment as evidence that the world was not crumbling around me, evidenced by the walls that were still standing and the floor that was still holding. I began to love brief moments of my day, when a student would ask me an interesting question or I would spot a cloud in the sky that helped me understand that things are okay. The mind can be a fearless competitor or it can be a ferocious protector. But underneath that binary is another part of yourself that can observe both parts with equanimity, loving them as they are. I took a step back to observe if the stories I was writing myself into were actually true. And in fact, they weren’t. My toxic thoughts gave the illusion that my reality was crumbling. Meditation cut through that mirage like a plane through clouds.

That’s what meditation feels like to me: being a tiny passenger on a giant machine I will never understand completely that cuts through the clouds of illusion, taking me to my next destination–while I hope that I won’t forget what I learned along the way.