By Ethan Maurice | March 28, 2026

Over a century into the age of aviation, there’s a modern-day debate among frequent flyers you’ve likely heard (or maybe even argued):

Which seat is better on an airplane: window or aisle?

There are innumerable articles, videos, and debates arguing “window vs. aisle” online. Most take a side, offer a rational argument, and break the decision down into a thought-out list of pros and cons.

“The window seat allows me to sleep against the wall of the plane.”

“For those of us with broad shoulders, being able to lean into the aisle a bit is a godsend so we aren’t smooshing our neighbors.”

“I don’t like bothering other people and am free to go to the bathroom whenever from the aisle seat.”

Etc.

These are solid points and make rational sense.

I, however, find them silly and a perfect metaphor for the human condition. The “window vs. aisle seat debate” is a microcosm of human culture’s relation to the broader reality in which it exists.

You see, if we initially accept the frame that choosing a window or aisle seat should be decided by weighing pros and cons, benefits and drawbacks, and reduce the choice to a rational decision, we have misstepped.

We are already lost.

No amount of thinking from this frame will lead us to the best outcome, because the question — while seemingly obvious and totally rational — has confined our awareness into a tiny little frame.

This is the quintessential human mistake. As social creatures, as group dreaming apes, culture often solicits more of our awareness than actual reality.

The culture of flying, a century since the Wright Brothers cracked the physics of flight, has reduced our experience of flying — blasting off into the sky, above the clouds, miles above the Earth’s surface to a far away place — to near complete blindness to the truly incredible event taking place. Instead of flying and gawking out the window in a state of wonder and amazement, we compare the comforts of window vs. aisle seats, try to squeeze some sleep out of the flight, or board armed with strategies to pass the time until the flying ends.

To anyone who lived before the Wright Brothers took flight in 1903, today’s flight culture would seem truly absurd.

And this cultural frame on flying is a perfect example of how we often overlook the miracle of life. If we limit our awareness to the cultural frame, we can lose sight of the eternally kaleidoscopic here and now. We can get stuck in our rational and culturally normative boxes. Our boredom is a measure of our blindness — our inability to perceive the endless dance of energy, matter, and awareness, cycling and re-cycling, in the ultimate surreality of this present moment.

Nowhere is our cultural blindness more obvious than on an airplane. In a pressurized tube with jet engines bolted to wings blasting through the sky at 500mph with hundreds of humans aboard and hardly any of them even remotely interested in the most physical, obvious, and visual man-made miracle observable out every window: hairless apes blasting through the blue, across the stratosphere, in flight.

Transcending the Frame of Window vs. Aisle Seat

By now, you’ve probably guessed it: I prefer the window seat. But, I’d like to reiterate (as it is the point of this article) that I did not arrive at this decision through pros vs. cons or rationally weighing window vs. aisle seat, but by looking outside the frame of the question.

Beyond the cultural frame, flights from the window seat have become near-religious experiences for me. Window shades wide, music that moves me through headphones, barreling down the runway, and blasting off into the wild blue yonder feels akin to modern-day shamanic flight.

Like, I’m getting high, literally. And this altered state often catalyzes some of my best creative work.

Throw in a tall drip coffee, pen, notebook, and laptop without the distraction of wifi, and I have all the ingredients for some of the widest awareness and highest creative potential of which I’m capable. The window seat has become a kind of sacred place for big picture thinking and feeling for me — a site of frequent insight as my inner-experience naturally mirrors the outer-experience of flight.

While I relish in the whole arch of the flight, here are a handful of the more inspiring sights, to convey the inner-outer experience, the wonder, and the effect:

The Metaphorical Choice of Window vs. Aisle Seat

With a wider frame in mind, the “window or aisle seat” question becomes about something much larger than pros, cons, and physical comfort: the choice between accepting the cultural frame or striving to see beyond it.

By choosing the window seat and flying with our window shades wide, we get to cast our awareness wider than the cultural frame.

In truth, this article isn’t much about choosing a seat on a plane. It’s a metaphor for seeing beyond culture, and more directly experiencing reality itself.

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