Harder To Be Down

He had gone up in his rocket again and again and returned to earth each time with a renewed sense of wonder. Even so, with each return it was harder to come back down. Or, rather, it was harder to be down.

He’d gradually grown accustomed to the feeling of being out of this world, up there where he had such a clear and dazzling view of the planet on which he was such a small and insignificant thing trapped in the strange habit called life; the planet where he was carried along through the days, surrounded on all sides by other moving and breathing things, things in a hurry to get to wherever it was they felt they had to be; harried by distractions and responsibilities and burdens, by the clutter of all the things they built and inhabited and owned and desired.

He felt so free when he was floating above it all, and the perspective also gave him a feeling of joy and gratitude that was harder to come by in the midst of the often pathetic reduction that too often passed itself off as existence.

His rocket was an old and relatively simple contraption, yet difficult to maintain all the same. It was built to carry two, and could not, in fact, fly with only a solitary passenger. Its operation was only possible through the work and cooperation of a duo of committed rocketeers.

As a result there were long and unfortunate stretches in his life when his rocket was grounded, yet even then his dreams were filled with visions of the things he had seen and felt on his many journeys, and there was a kind of bittersweet solace in this.