When we fly from New York to Australia, we cross the International Date Line, which means that we lose an entire day: we leave on the evening of December 8, and December 9 just disappears, as we arrive the morning of December 10. During this record-long 17.5-hour flight from JFK to Auckland (that’s the on-paper time; the actual time was closer to 17 hours), I was able to watch two movies, dabble in a few TV shows, eat two full meals, and sleep a decent night’s worth of sleep. I arrived in Auckland feeling really refreshed and awake. Of the two movies I watched, the first one I dove into was Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. I’ve been a huge Downton Abbey fan since 2021 when we started watching it (yes, I realize I am extremely late to the fan club). The entire series is so good, and the writing is absolutely hilarious when it comes to how snobbish and classist the Crawley family can be. In the movie, Lord Grantham and his eldest daughter, Lady Mary, are in London, considering downgrading their large London home for a much smaller London flat. As they are viewing a potential flat, Lord Grantham walks down the hallway and questions why there is a family who would live above them, and then another family living under them. He groaned about it, muttering that it felt like a “layer cake of strangers.” It was clear that he was struggling to wrap his head around understanding modern apartment living. He even says that the idea of unknown people living so close to him was “extraordinary.” He asked what they were to do when they would want to “go up to bed.” Lady Mary responds, “You don’t go up (to bed), you simply go along (in a flat)!”

I laughed out loud at this, and quite hard. I’ve spent my entire adult life living in modern apartments in one of the most densely populated cities in the world, and so I always struggle at the idea of people who live in large homes and have too much space. To me, it always feels like wasted space. Who really needs that much space simply to live and exist?

As I laughed at this, though, I am reminded that it is all relative. Everyone’s version of “normal” Is quite different. I even thought about recent conversations I’ve had with Chris when we’ve talked about our opinions on business class in-flight service across our recent flights on British Airways, American, and now Qantas. We both agreed that BA in-flight service was pretty good, American was subpar (as to be expected since U.S. airlines are always terrible for service; even in business class, it feels like everything they do for you is a massive favor), and Qantas service was excellent (as is to be expected based on historically proven excellence). I could imagine the two of us having this conversation in public, and how some passersby could hear us and think we were two complete, utter snobs who were totally out of touch with reality. But the truth is: this is our lived reality, and well, we’re allowed to have opinions about it, are we not?