My “Passengers” Moment. It didn’t take 240 years to wake up —… | by Matthew McClendon | Jul, 2025

I used to think it was Jennifer Aniston in Passengers.

You know, the one with the starship Avalon carrying 5,000 colonists in cryo-sleep?

The one where Chris Pratt wakes up 90 years too early on the luxury starliner bound for a new world?

It turns out it was Jennifer Lawrence, not Aniston.

Back then, I didn’t honestly care who the star was.

What stuck with me was the story, specifically hers.

She wasn’t a pilot or a scientist.

She was a writer.

She chose to travel 120 years into the future to document life on a pristine world, both distant and full of possibility.

She’d live there, gather experience, and then turn around and come home.

Two hundred and forty years of transit time — she’d hold the exclusive title of being the only human to make that round-trip.

Earth would be unrecognizable. Everyone she knew would be long gone.

But she’d have the story.

I used to think that was the coolest thing in the world.

I’d sit with my love for sci-fi, for the impossible, and think:

God, what would it feel like to have something like that under your belt?

A once-in-a-lifetime story — stretched across centuries.

She did it to write.

Her father was a famous author too — a war hero who turned his memories into meaning.

I remember watching that film and quietly telling myself,

I’ll never have a lived experience like that. I’m just… me.

But here’s what no movie prepared me for:

My version of a 240-year journey was already happening.

I just hadn’t recognized the stars outside the window.

My stasis wasn’t cryo-sleep.

It was addiction.

It was shame.

It was staying quiet in a relationship that made me feel invisible.

When I finally woke up, I wasn’t approaching a distant world —

I was already living in one.

The margins.

The places most people avert their eyes from.

The people they call lost causes.

I’ve slept beside survivors of overdoses and miracles.

I’ve laughed with men the world forgot.

I’ve seen more dignity in a single sidewalk conversation

than in a thousand polished LinkedIn bios.

I’ve lived in the belly of systems built to discard, and I came back with my eyes wide open.

So now, I write.

Not from orbit.

Not from a terraformed moon.

From here.

From the sidewalk.

From church basements and plastic chairs in recovery meetings.

From in-between spaces where humanity pulses raw, loud, and true.

That’s my round trip.

That’s my Passengers moment.

I used to envy the idea of waking up 120 years later and having something to say.

Now I realize — I do have something to say.

Because I made it through.

I’m not returning to Earth.

I’m returning to myself.

… and I’m writing every word like someone who finally understands the value of being awake.