Up in the Air

Finished up two books recently, might explain why I'm having a hard time completing another post on David, but anyway the books.

First Up in the Air. Amazing book. The title, like most, has dual reference. Ryan Bingham is a member of the business class of flyers who rack up hundreds of thousands of miles a year always up in the air. At a deeper level Ryan's life, plans, relationships are all metaphorically up in the air, always circling the runway, and the story is about him trying to land only to find he has been circling the wrong runway.

What happens when you stop moving long enough to realize all the people and ideals you have put your faith cannot hold altitude?

I always enjoy getting a chance at peaking inside the lives of people who live so radically different than I do. I fancy that I could have been Ryan Bingham, a man lost in the airways of the United States given just a few different choices.

The book is the story of the crash landing at the end of such a disconnected life.

Some of the concepts I found fascinating in the book had to do with how endlessly worthless corporate ideology is. Ryan searches for value, for meaning, in his work with no success. He criticizes the religious while worshipping a god he knows is false and will ultimately sacrifice him. The book leads us through his faith in each and every one of his idols being destroyed.

Is that what the book was trying to convey? Is there a sense that once you slow down, once you stop flying and put some weight behind the ideals you have in your life they will give way underneath you. The only way to manage is to maintain altitude, never travel in a straight line, always jump from point to point?

It was a good book, very sad, and very modern.