This column comes to you from the sky. No, really: I write these very words as I leave the smelly factory air of Newark and board a plane to come home to this beloved campus. And the familiar experience, 15,000 feet in the sky, brings to mind my own evolving reaction to the idea of flight.

Many times, when I was little, I had this frenzied need to jump from the rooftops and fly. I had a dream where I slowly grew wings on my back, right behind my arms, and took off just as the full moon rose. I could see the New York skyline as the wind swept my face. I felt myself break not only the bonds of gravity, but also the bonds of time as I saw that the entire world had frozen below me. I had swept down to just inches above the asphalt of the streets, and I could see a man sleeping in a bed, another in the process of laughing at a joke, another, deep in thought, brows furrowed with concentration. I was brilliant — it was brilliant, for nothing but that one second of time mattered anymore. I wanted to see that world that way, so freely and effortlessly. I wanted to freeze time so that I could look into a man’s eyes and be able to discover his entire life through that look.

Herman Hesse once wrote that a man’s personal story is sacred because, in each one, a redeemer is nailed to the cross. I think I can add to this: I believe that a man’s dreams become crucified, over and over again, as they come into contact with the knowledge of the world. But many pretend that the crucifixion did not occur. Many still retort that “ignorance is bliss,” many still use humor or family or even life to ignore understanding themselves. This self-denial and dishonesty is the essence of suicide and the midlife crisis, isn’t it?

My idea of flight underwent such a crucifixion at some tender, single-digit age. I found that my idea of noble, angelic wings more represented a carpet ride in “Aladdin” than the jumbo jet — the huge metal tube with arms that is so common to our modern existence. It was no longer flight to me — it was now peanuts and a movie and jet lag. I hated getting up at the crack of dawn, checking into that security desk, checking into the other one, forgetting my life for a day just to prepare for such a flight. Many other childhood fantasies went away in much the same way, when I realized how extraordinary things were made so tedious by everyday events.

I think the scars from that crucifixion have healed. Now planes seem to be a place of capitalism in full strut ($6 pillows, anyone?): a classist society (the lowly coach passengers cannot even piss in the wonderful toilets of the first class) not very happy with displays of selfless altruism (“Put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others”). In fact, as I write this very sentence, I am bombarded with ads above me to swipe my credit card in the appropriate slot to get DirecTV and Boingo WiFi and waste the two hours I have left in this journey.

And the worst part is we buy into all of it. Walk through any international flight and you will find people 10 inches from rectangular displays, catching up on movies they could care less about because there is nothing else to do. I find this perhaps the most depressing of all. Who are we as people in modern society if we cannot sit and simply be for several precious hours? I am as guilty of this as the rest of you — you have no idea how many movies I watch on a plane that I would have never picked out of a rental store or seen with friends. Thoreau told us that the greatest unexplored universe is within ourselves, but we have stopped listening. In this age of constant stimulation, we find the sacred idle hours of a modern journey unbearable.

And yet, beyond the tedium of modern-day air travel and what it exposes about modern humanity, there remains something uniquely wonderful about the whole thing. As I write this, and as you read it, at least a couple dozen child-sized hearts will have skipped a beat because of their first takeoff, their first landing, their first scary dip of the plane. Another couple wide sets of eyes will marvel at the glimpse of how everything they know and love turns into an ant colony, and have a bizarre and wonderful realization of their world’s fragility. And at least one 8-year-old boy just fell in love with his flight attendant.

There is a reason we fly planes over football games and patriotic rallies. There is a reason why the streak that a jet engine makes across the summer sky makes us glance, if only for a second. No matter how worldly the industry, no matter how indulgent the people, there is a nucleus of the holy and the beautiful about flight in the human imagination.

E-mail [email protected] to tell him why he should be more cynical about flying in the skies.