There is a moment I have always loved more than any destination.
It is not when the plane touches down.
Not when you finally step into a new place.
It is that suspended instant when you take your seat, rest the camera on your knees, look through the window, and realize that for the next few hours you have surrendered control.
And the feeling is fucking liberating.
Because we spend our lives planning every detail, as though a well-organized calendar could persuade the universe to do what we want.
Then you board a plane and understand that from this moment on, all you can do is trust.
A pilot you do not know.
A route you have never seen.
A piece of metal deciding to challenge the sky.
In the end, it is not so different from life.
We build expectations, schedules, even imaginary versions of ourselves, convinced there must be a finished screenplay somewhere.
Then the journey begins.
And almost never follows the version we imagined.
Thankfully.
Because the best things in my life never came from perfect plans.
They came from the unexpected.
A wrong turn.
A person I met while looking for no one.
A photograph taken five seconds after deciding it was time to put the camera back in the bag.
Perhaps that is why I photograph details every time I leave.
An unfastened seat belt.
A hand resting against the window.
The cold light entering through the glass.
The reflection of a face I do not know.
They are not merely details.
They are the final moments of the person I was before takeoff.
Because every journey, however brief, always demands something in return.
It takes one version of you away.
And if you are lucky, gives another back.
As the engine wakes and the world begins slowly to fall away beneath the wings, I always find myself doing the same thing.
I do not make a wish.
I do not ask for success.
Or money.
Not even happiness.
I ask only that the journey have something to teach me.
A face capable of leaving me with a question.
A road that forces me to change direction.
A sunset that reminds me how small we are.
A story worth telling.
Because perhaps that is why I keep leaving.
Not to find a different place.
But to return with different eyes.
And when the wheels leave the runway, for one instant everything remains suspended.
Even fear.
Even doubt.
Even that feeling of not knowing exactly where my life is going.
Only one certainty remains.
Sometimes the only way to discover who you are becoming is to find the courage to sit beside a window, hold your breath, and let the world grow smaller beneath you.
In the end, that journey gave me far more than I had gone looking for. Things even the wildest version of my imagination had never predicted. A desert seen from above, seemingly drawn for the sole purpose of astonishing me. People, streets, moments I could not even imagine that morning as I climbed the stairs.
But of course, I did not know any of that yet.
In that photograph, all I know is that I was about to let myself fall forward with my eyes closed, hoping something, somewhere, would catch me.