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His wife texted from 30,000 feet that she was flying over him. His security camera caught the whole embarrassing, romantic thing.
It was a Tuesday morning, and author and speaker Carlos Whittaker had just done something most married people have done a hundred times: dropped his wife off at the airport at 6:30 AM and driven home. By 7:30, he was on the porch with his coffee, already thinking about the day.
Then his phone buzzed. “I’m flying over you right now.”
What his home security camera captured next is the part that got the internet. Whittaker ran into the yard, phone in one hand, waving at the sky with everything he had, jumping, looking up, trying to make himself visible from 30,000 feet. The video, which he shared on Instagram, has the slightly blurry, slightly absurd quality of security footage, and that’s exactly what makes it land. He’s not performing for the camera. He didn’t know the camera was there.
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Watching it back, Whittaker said he felt a flicker of embarrassment at first. “A grown man, running around like a 10-year-old.” But that feeling passed quickly. “That little boy is still in there,” he wrote. “And he’s not a problem. He’s a gift.”
An awe-struck boy looks up at the sky. Photo credit: Canva
The reaction he describes, that sudden, unguarded surge of wanting to connect with someone you love across an impossible distance, turns out to have real backing in psychology. Research published in Scientific Reports found that deliberate experiences of awe are linked to meaningful improvements in mental health, including reductions in stress and depressive symptoms and increases in overall wellbeing. The instinct Whittaker followed without thinking, running toward wonder instead of away from it, is something researchers say most adults suppress.
“We spend so much of our lives trying to act like we have it all together that we forget how to feel wonder in the small things,” he wrote. “Wonder isn’t childish. It’s sacred.”
An airplane flies over an excited man. Photo credit: Canva
The comments filled up fast with people who recognized themselves in the video. One wrote that her 19-year-old son is in aviation school and flies past the family home sometimes. “We all run out just like that,” she said, “and watch with awe as my baby flies through the air.” Another described texting a friend every time she drives past her office, both of them waving even though neither can see the other. “Little things like that are the best.”
The plane was gone in seconds. His wife couldn’t see him. None of that was the point.
This article originally appeared earlier this year.
The post His wife texted from 30,000 feet that she was flying over him. His security camera caught the whole embarrassing, romantic thing. appeared first on Upworthy.
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