How to North Pole
All I could see was white, for hours on end.
This was while on a recent cross-continental flight, over 16 hours, that took a route across the top of the world, crossing the North Pole.
As it was daytime, and I had a window seat, I couldn't help but stare effortlessly out of the window. A white blanket of snow covered the earth as far as the eye could see. Occasionally, jagged ridges of ice caught the sunlight, like shattered diamonds against the endless whiteness.
While the plane was traveling at a high speed, everything seemed to slow down at that moment though. A peacefulness washed over me—not the forced calm of a meditation practice, but something more spontaneous and genuine that rose from witnessing something so untouched.
I realized I was staring at a part of the world rarely seen by anyone. It was completely uninhabited—by humans, animals, or vegetation. It was empty but full at the same time.
Emptiness often suggests absence, yet staring down at the vast white expanse, I discovered a different kind of emptiness—one full of presence, not absence.
I pressed my forehead against the cold window, watching ice formations that had existed long before human eyes gazed upon them. The landscape wasn't waiting for anyone's arrival. It simply was—perfect in its self-contained existence. Without concern for anyone else.
Somewhere between cloud and ice, I recognized something of myself in that landscape. A flicker of wonder came alive in me, followed by an unexpected desire to carry its profound peacefulness back into my cluttered life.
How often I had mistaken my own quiet spaces for emptiness. The digital world has trained me to equate activity with value. My attention fractures across dozens of apps, hundreds of websites and messages. The complexity compounds in my digital world until my mind resembles an overstuffed storage unit—everything is there but nothing is found.
Yet thirty-five thousand feet above the earth, that snow-covered expanse made a compelling argument for having less, not more.
Time behaves differently over the North Pole. The usual markers disappear. Just the curve of the earth wearing its white cap, indifferent to the human constructs of hours and minutes.
I checked the time and was surprised to find that two hours had passed. There's a certain peace in touching, even briefly, something that operates outside my usual frantic rhythm.
I also felt small against that immense whiteness. Properly small.
The humbling vastness reminded me of my place in the world—not diminishing my importance but contextualizing it. A relief washed over me—the pressure of being the center of my universe momentarily lifted. It was a strange but welcomed feeling: becoming smaller made me feel more.
From thirty-five thousand feet, patterns emerge that remain invisible at ground level. Wind had sculpted the snow into ripples that only revealed their natural and perfect geometry from this height.
I thought about how perspective transforms my understanding—how stepping back from my life helps reveal patterns I can’t see when pressed up against my daily existence.
As I continued staring out the airplane window, I began to wonder about what might lie beneath this immaculate surface, as there is more depth that meets the eye.
Similarly, the parts of myself I rarely acknowledge—these are my personal North Poles. Regions unmarked on my mental maps. Regions I fly over but seldom explore.
My deepest creativity lies in these untouched regions. My most authentic self exists in this interior space that lies beneath the surface.
As the plane continued its arc across the sky, I pressed my palm against the window one last time, feeling the cold seep through the glass.
To recognize that the rarely seen parts of the world, like the rarely acknowledged parts of myself, aren't empty at all but full of meaning. All I have to do is pause and look.
And that is how I learned to North Pole.
