How to stay awake in times of crisis
Part 1 Wizz Air
A treacherous Wizz Air flight to Istanbul in January reminded me how the body responds to panic- sometimes it gets sleepy!
We were landing in a thunderstorm and lurching up and down in the sky. People were praising Allah, babies were crying- I was clutching onto the seat in front of me and exchanging nervous glances with the girl in the aisle next to me. I felt my body get heavy and slow, as if I was going to fall asleep. I didn’t doze off and instead repeated “this will pass” over and over with my eyes fixed to the window until we were safely on the cold, hard ground.
The lesson here isn’t regarding the competence of Wizz Air; it’s to do with what my body did in the fight or flight situation.
Have you ever been waiting for an important interview and pinched yourself because you’re not nervous anymore, and kind of sleepy? It happens quite often, Amy Phoeler talks about it before performing at SNL!
The body can sink into a slumber as a way to protect itself from danger. 🙈.
I’m not going to dig into the psychology of this further. I’m interested in the doziness as a metaphor for a phenomenon being experienced in this city and maybe in yours.
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Last year, like a multitude of arts graduates, I moved to Australia from the UK. I’ve been living in Melbourne for just over twelve months. When I first arrived, I was surprised at how “far away” it felt. The flight from Perth to Melbourne, after the 17hrs from Heathrow, is four hours, the same as the leg from London to Istanbul.
Australia really is in Asia, even though it thinks of itself as European, and when people talk about travelling, everyone mentions “overseas” because, of course, you have to go over the seas.
Australia is a continent and a country. Things feel separate and ancient. Its landmass was partitioned from Pangaea 200 million years ago and has been floating away from Antarctica at about 7km a year. This island continent has been inhabited by Aboriginal Australians for at least 65000 years, and they continue to practice the oldest living culture in the world. Most people don’t know that Western Australia contains the world’s oldest crust and fossils of the oldest lifeforms.
Everything about Australia is at odds with the plush green hills and manicured landscapes of where I grew up in England. When I get off the plane at Tullermarine Airport, the scent of eucalyptus hits me like a wall. The first dose is always the strongest; I forget it’s coming until it happens again. The air smells medicinal.
Something is gradually dawning on me, the longer I spend in this country. I think there is a collective amnesia going on. I first noticed it last winter when the temperatures plummeted and there was no central heating or any kind of insulation to soften the colder months. I would wake up and see my breath in the room of my sharehouse. It’s well known that the buildings in Melbourne aren’t fitted for winter, they’re not great in summer either. When there’s a string of days above 30 °C, the city's Kmarts are sold out of air conditioner units and fans. I’ve decided this has to be because, in Melbourne, the scorcher summer makes us forget about how cold the last winter was, and in freezing July, our bodies have forgotten what 40 degrees feels like. The seasons here swing like crazy, and it never quite gets bad enough for us to change something because summer or winter is always on its way.
There is something to this amnesia that reminds me of the sleepy fight or flight brain. There is something, and we are all doing it, that's protecting us from what we need to see.
