Lyrics:
I’m up in the air
Choices drifting by me everywhere.
And I can’t find the one
That would help me do the work I’ve left undone,
‘Cause I’m up in the air.
I’m making some plans,
Finding out there’s always new demands.
And I can’t be precise;
When people ask me what I’m doing with my life,
I say, “It’s up in the air”
I’m hearing from friends.
It’s that tired, old advice again:
“You just cannot keep floating all around.
Oh, you got to get your feet back on the ground.”
But it’s hard to come down
When you’re up in the air.
I’m traveling in my car,
Always lost, though I don’t go that far.
I find that I can live most anywhere.
Everyone I meet has so much they can share.
But I don’t settle down,
‘Cause I’m up in the air.
I’m thinking of my past,
The comfort in my home that couldn’t last.
Now my family tells me work for your success,
And they want to see me find some happiness.
But I’m not sure where that is,
‘Cause I’m up in the air.
I’m talking with my peers,
Listening to them tell their inner fears.
Some have lives that haven’t gone the way they planned,
And some are trapped in situations they can’t stand.
But I don’t want the same for me,
So I stay up in the air.
I’m out in the woods;
Something here does my heart so good.
I breathe the air, and I know that I’m alive.
And I stare at all the birds as they fly by.
I guess it all comes down to them,
‘Cause they’re up in the air…
Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a corporate downsizer. His job is to travel all around the US by airplane and lay off employees as kindly as possible by giving them hope for a new life afterwards through good and persuasive speaking skills to minimize their shock. The theme of his lecture is “What’s in your backpack?” and he talks about living free from relationships or unnecessary burdens in the backpack. Through his lecture, he shows his way of life, that he lives on the airplane more than 300 days out of the year. The movie ends with Ryan Bingham looking back at his life whether it has been actually up in the air after he achieves the 7th ten-million-mile frequent flyer in America, which has been a personal goal in his life.
I believe this movie is like a mirror that reflects how modern people live. They keep firm in their own conviction and run for their own purpose; that’s all about their life. Ryan considers himself a free soul, who is different from other ordinary people. But has he actually been enjoying true freedom? Is he happier? I believe that the movie gives a good ending and passes the homework to audiences to answer what true freedom is, what human lives for, what human runs for, what the answers to life are, and what it means to live.
Fleeting Human Life
from Teacher Woo Myung’s book “Stop Living In The Land Go To The Everlasting World Of Happiness Live There Forever”
All people have periods of happiness and unhappiness.
Even if a person has a family that other people envy,
there is unhappiness within it.
He may wish for whatever causing this unhappiness
to be resolved, but when it happens,
he wishes for something else.
Wishing for human happiness is a manifestation
of the sense of inferiority in one’s mind.
Even if man achieves everything he wants,
he eventually dies, and the past is all a dream.
If man lives knowing the way to live forever,
he would know what he needs to do.
Man is an entity that does not know anything.
His only with is to get or gain things that he wants,
but this wish is just an expression of his delusions.
Time flows by, and all those whose lives have come to an end
have disappeared from the world.
Everything they wanted to achieve were like dreams,
dreamt during a brief nap.
Those who only exist in their thoughts have vanished,
without having done or achieved anything.
Man does not know the ways of the world
because he is not born in the world,
and he has never been born in the world.
He does not know the principle
that he exists because the world exists.
He has made his own world
by copying the things in the world,
and he lives within this mind world,
ignorant of where he came from and where he will go.
He runs around, for the fulfillment of his satisfaction only,
but no one can turn back the tide of time.
Only God can give man birth in the world without time;
only God can give salvation.
Salvation is giving one birth in the world without time,
and allowing him to live there.
There, time does not exist
so there is no birth, death, aging or sickness,
and because time does not exist,
one is an eternal never-dying immortal.
Man cannot prevail over time;
only God can take man
to the world that he prevailed over time –
the world that is beyond time.
Blaming the world and time,
suffering and sadness,
aging, sickness, birth and death,
desires, anger and foolishness,
the five desires and seven sins;
these things all exist in human life – the world of sin,
but they do not exist in the true world – the world of God.
