On: How the Iran war is hurting travelers, airline industry

The headlines speak of a crisis, of shortages and soaring prices, as if these were natural disasters like a flood or a fire. But this is not nature. This is grammar gone wrong. We have built a world where the movement of bodies across continents is treated as a right, a fact of life, rather than a complex, fragile arrangement of fuel, politics, and trust.

Look at the word “travel.” In one context, it means the simple act of going from A to B. In another, it has become a commodity, a line item in an economy, a thing to be secured. When the Strait of Hormuz is blocked, we do not say, “Ah, the conditions for this particular language game have changed.” We say, “There is a shortage.” We look for the missing object, the missing fuel, as if the problem were merely physical. But the confusion is deeper. We have forgotten that the meaning of “freedom to travel” is not an abstract ideal but a practice. It is the practice of booking, of flying, of arriving. When the practice breaks, the word “freedom” loses its grip. It becomes an empty sign, hovering in the air, demanding satisfaction that cannot be given.

I feel a sharp irritation at the anxiety. It is the anxiety of a tool that has been lifted from its toolbox and placed on a pedestal. We are trying to use the word “normal” to describe a state that was never stable, only convenient. The jet fuel is not the essence of travel; it is the condition. When the condition fails, we do not need a new philosophy of travel. We need to see that the game has stopped. The fly is not trapped in the bottle because it is unlucky; it is trapped because it keeps trying to fly through the glass. The glass is the expectation that the world will remain arranged for our convenience. The dissolution of the confusion comes not from finding more fuel, but from recognizing that the demand for uninterrupted movement was a grammatical illusion all along. The pain is real, but the metaphysical outrage is misplaced. We are not losing a right; we are losing a habit. And habits, when broken, leave us staring at the empty space where the tool used to be.