Walking Away

I’m posting new material on my web site chrisliss.com, but figured I’d cross-post this one here while we get our newsletter capabilities in order. Apologies if you end up getting emailed twice when that eventually happens.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

— George Bernard Shaw

If someone offers you a bad deal, walk away. It doesn’t matter how much you need it, or even whether you have an alternative, if it feels wrong and egregiously unfair, don’t take it.

I’ve heard people accept the unacceptable because they “need to keep their job,” or because they believe people in their social and professional circles otherwise won’t accept them. If that’s the case, it’s time to find out. Maybe you’ll have to start over, go somewhere you’re valued and make friends who accept you. Or maybe you’ll die destitute and alone — to live a meaningful life you have to run the risk.

I believe this firmly. There are always options even if they are not immediately apparent. Compromise is okay in small matters, but selling your soul on the large ones is always the wrong move.

The reason I write this today is I am struggling with just such a situation. You might laugh, think it’s much ado about nothing, but I’m heeding the feeling of dread and disgust, giving it the attention it deserves after gritting my teeth and pushing through the last 20-odd years.

I absolutely despise the experience of air travel. So much so I wrote a detailed piece five years ago on how to fix it, but with the arrival of Covid, things have only gotten worse.

When you set foot in an airport, you are surrendering to a totalitarian state. Since 9/11 you’ve been a potential terrorist, and since 2020 also a superspreader of deadly disease. Your luggage could have a bomb, so you must not walk 20 feet from your bag, and your toothpaste tube that exceeds four ounces could have some kind of liquid explosive too, so it must be confiscated. The risk is so great, a TSA henchman, whose only discernible skills are eating pizza and following orders, can, at his discretion, rifle through your underwear and personal care products. And now you can’t even breathe freely because, though you’re not sick and got a negative test the day prior, (and/or three doses and counting of the miracle vaccine), you might yet have the virus for which you were vaccinated/tested.

Of course, those people seated at the restaurant 10 feet from you have been granted exemption because how else are they going to eat? Don’t get it twisted, Covid is serious, but not so serious people would have to eat before going to the airport, or, God forbid, go half a day while not actively digesting something. The often-filthy piece of plastic/paper/cloth on your face, which doesn’t stop the spread and the remnants of which pollute the entire planet, is apparently essential unless you’re consuming a mediocre $20 burger that would cost $8 anywhere else.

Naturally, one must prove bloodstream compliance via digital papers or submit to a PCR test (from which the CDC admitted extracting DNA without informed consent) for a virus that’s prevalent on both sides of the Atlantic and for which bloodstream compliance has no correlation with spread. By doing so, you are perpetuating a system that demands compliant bloodstreams without demonstrated public health benefits — either that or invasive (and in some places expensive) testing for an already endemic pathogen to which most people have already been exposed and/or vaccinated against.

But the specific burdens and insults are beside the point. It’s the arbitrary rules, tyrannically enforced and dutifully complied with that make the airport experience so awful. And by awful, I don’t mean merely inconvenient or uncomfortable. I mean so soul-crushingly awful that by consenting to those terms, you have bargained away an essential part of your human dignity.

That might sound hyperbolic — but I needed words commensurate with the dreadful feelings that arise when I even imagine subjecting myself to that again. Yes, I need to get back to the States to see friends and family, but the terms of this deal feel way off. And this is on top of the three $1600-per-round-trip crammed coach seats for which I’m willing to pay.

What can I do? We could not travel, but my partner Heather is committed to going and bringing our 10-year old daughter. I could stay behind, but in a time of economic and political volatility, I don’t want to be six thousand miles from my family for a month. I’ve considered private jets (too expensive) and boats (too slow, also expensive.) I’ve even contemplated digging a trans-Atlantic tunnel under the seafloor. (Yes, I realize it would never be completed in any of our lifetimes.)

Obviously, I do not have a good answer yet. I just know the present alternatives (a) subjecting myself to the indignity of air travel, (b) staying home without my family (and also being deprived of seeing family and friends in my own country); or (c) trying to convince Heather not to go when it’s important to her and Sasha to see everyone are all unacceptable. I reject all three apparent choices I have and would like a better one. I don’t mind paying extra (within reason), and I don’t mind if it’s less convenient (to a point) or takes longer (within reason.)

We’ll see. I have three months to figure something out — or invent a new form of transportation.