(Dobbs) We Can See The Top Side Of The Clouds
It gives me faith that maybe we can fix what seems unfixable.
Late last month, after a breathtaking bike trip (pun fully intended) on the towering twisty climbs of Mallorca, a big Spanish rock in the middle of the Mediterranean….
…. my wife’s and my journey home began on a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt and…. not to overstate it…. I had something of an epiphany. As a journalist, I have flown millions of miles, and looked down on countless clouds around the world, but the ones on which I gazed as we ascended that dawn (prompting me to pull out my iPhone) had a transcendence I don’t remember ever seeing before.
They made me feel small.
For while buried beneath those clouds was a scenic paradise, buried beneath clouds over another part of the very same continent is a war being fought where people die every day of the week. And beneath the clouds over other forlorn parts of the planet, people are starving, people are oppressed. Our own democracy is darkened beneath the storm clouds of politics.
But the clouds over Mallorca also made me feel big. Big, because for millennia, no one even knew what it looked like on the top side of the clouds. In only a teardrop of time since the dawn of mankind, we do know now.
For that matter, through the eons of human history, when people peered across a shoreline, only a fearless few— the Leif Ericssons, the Christopher Columbuses, the Ferdinand Magellans, even before them the Polynesians who plied the Pacific and the merchants who moved their wares by sea between the Middle East and India— only a fearless few knew what it looked like on the other side of the water.
But it was those luminous clouds that made me think about how much we’ve learned, how much we’ve seen, how far we’ve come.
Not 120 years ago, initially flying less than the length of a football field, the Wright Brothers’ wood-and-fabric airplane lifted itself no more than 14 feet above the ground. Just sitting on the tarmac, my seat on the Airbus A321 was more than 14 feet above the ground.
The Wright Brothers achieved the miracle of flight, but they didn’t likely even dream of breaking through the clouds.
A quarter century later, after clearing a tractor at the end of a New York runway by about 15 feet and a telephone line by about 20, Charles Lindbergh flew his Spirit of St. Louis farther and higher than the Wright Brothers ever imagined— 3,600 miles to Paris, staying above storm clouds at about 10,000 feet.
But on his 33-½ hour endeavor, Lindbergh might not have known enough to dream that one day, someone like me would sit amongst about 200 other people in a flying machine that weighs more than 50 tons but cuts through clouds with the ease of an arrow on its arc to a target.
It’s all on a par with the miracle of electricity, the miracle of television, the miracle of cars, the miracle of computers, the miracle of the internet. We abound in miracles. Most of us take for granted the miracle of clean water. Of a flush toilet. Of refrigeration. We’ve half stopped being amazed by the miracle of a spaceship slicing through the solar system.
And, the miracle of modern medicine. People suffered since time immemorial from diseases now prevented, even eradicated, by vaccines. People who otherwise would be permanently crippled by injuries now are repaired by outpatient surgeries. People’s failing hearts and lungs, which once would have been a death warrant, now can be repaired, even replaced.
Not many centuries back, when human life barely changed between birth and death, they’d have ridiculed the thought of it all. Now, with rapid-fire renewal in every facet of our lives, transformation comes every year, sometimes every day.
We haven’t cured everything in this 21st Century. Far from it. We haven’t solved everything, we haven’t fixed everything, we haven’t defeated everything. But we have seen more growth than the countless generations that lived before us combined, and living now in an age when we can see the top side of the clouds….
…. I believe that someday, we will.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Greg, thank you for this wonderful and optimistic reflection on this moment. I had a senior partner at my former firm whom we affectionately referred to as Yoda because he always saw rhe myriad advances in human life off- setting the daily horrors. He took that long view and in the twenty years we worked togethet he was, with time, almost always right.... tomorrow can and will be better. Thank you
Greg, how upifting to read about "miracles" and see those transcendant clouds. A welcome change from the daily news.
Cobi