It's funny, a "one-way ticket" is a cliché, a trope, something so meaningful it has entered the lexicon and taken on a life beyond its literal meaning. Perhaps that post-practical, lexical existence is the reason I don't "feel it" yet.
Or, maybe, I do "feel it," and I just don't realize what "it" is. I read a Sociology paper once that argued that teens who smoke pot for the first time don't understand what being high is supposed to feel like—somehow they learn to process and feel the high by being with their friends. While I would question the validity of the findings, the paper's central argument has stuck with me as a fascinating example of how far we can go in questioning what it means to experience anything, what it means to feel, or to know.
Thus maybe I am already "high" on my one-way ticket, and I just don't recognize it yet. Certainly I have experience many changes of late in my behavior, changes in my attitudes, in my choices. Besides this trip, I can't think of any other major variables that would cause so many significant changes in my makeup. But I haven't felt the connection, as though I expected to channel it through my conscious mind and implement all those changes intentionally. Rather I feel like I'm watching someone else, as though I have always been on autopilot, but recently got a major software update.
