Through the Ash Cloud

With the recent air travel impasse in Europe, I was reminded of our own recent travel experience in March.

“Let me get this straight! There is one runway out at JFK and a little thunderstorm and all these flights are cancelled?” The words flew like projectiles out of the young man’s mouth.

“That’s right,” replied the ticket agent. This gentle man with tired, aching eyes had helped us minutes before, checking option after option for flights to our final destination of Barcelona, Spain. Before getting to him we had waited an hour and a half in the ticket line to learn that our original connecting flight to New York had been delayed and we would miss our flight from New York to Barcelona. All the other flights were booked and we’d miss the big soccer match on Sunday night that we had already spent a small fortune on.

After finally arranging for a new connection from NY to Paris and then to Barcelona, we waited in the 30-minute security line and made our way to the gate at DIA. We arrived only to find that our Denver to New York flight was no longer delayed but cancelled completely. After waiting another 45-minutes in line at the gate and talking to a less than helpful agent on the phone (who assured us there was no way we were leaving from Denver for at least 2 days), we approached the ticket agent with the compassionate countenance.

We held out hope that he would have a different answer while looking at the same flight information screen as the phone agent we had just talked to. After 10 minutes of checking and rechecking, phone calls and multiple near-solutions, he found us a flight the next day and asked us to wait a few minutes as he called the international office.

It was as we waited that the young man approached the ticket counter and posed his sarcastic question. “That’s crap!”

“No,” replied the agent, “It’s weather and federal regulation.”

“Yeah, well that’s crap!”

“That’s it, we’re done here,” concluded the ticket agent.

“What? Excuse me,” stammered the young man.

“There are many people waiting to be helped. I was supposed to be done working half an hour ago and if you can’t be civil then we are done here. You can pick up a courtesy phone and talk to an agent on the phone.”

The young man then tried to pass off a nervous smile for a confident one, “wait a minute. What can you do to help me?”

“Move to the side, let me help a few other people and I’ll see what I can do.” A few moments later, after cooling down, the young man returns to the counter, “I know it’s not your fault. I’m just trying to get home.”

An older woman, who moments earlier had been very sweet with us in line, was berating the next agent over. “What do you mean tomorrow? We have to be in Rome by tomorrow or we will miss our cruise. What are you going to do to make this right? Are you going to refund my money for the flight and the cruise?”

At first the agent makes an attempt at understanding, “It is a weather delay. We can’t control the weather and what the FAA is telling us to do.”

The distressed traveler, as they call them, persisted, “why are you doing this to me? This is awful. You can’t do this to me…what do you mean you can’t help me…you just won’t!”

The airline’s ambassador escalated her tone, “maam, we are trying to help you. I’m not God. I can’t control the weather.”

This was not a rare scene. Air travel, at any time, can be unpredictable, crowded and stress provoking. Who could have predicted when a volcano that had been dormant for 200 years would erupt and blanket Europe in a cloud of ash, crippling air travel? One must assume that in the past week there have been hundreds of missed births, weddings, funerals, and every major life event in between, due to that cloud of ash.

What is unique is the set of experiences and perspectives and events that each individual brings to that moment. For each person it is different every time because moments are fleeting things, and each new one changes the way that we handle or receive the next.

There is a foundation that we all draw upon when confronted with a moment. I believe that we are born with some of that foundation. Some crucial parts are added as we are reared and grow both physically and mentally. Whatever memories that march you to that point as you finally approach the ticket counter after waiting for hours, having your plans, expectations and financial commitments turned upside down, create a filter through which we view the human being on the other side. At times there is no filter at all, simply opacity, obscuring the other soul in our midst.

This happens to us in different contexts, dozens, if not hundreds of times every day. It is the crux of every interaction, both actual and conceived of in our minds. It informs the mood of our psyche and the spiritual energy that we emit into the airwaves that we all inhabit.

To be certain, Tara and I felt the swell of anxiety and frustration as we learned that we might miss two days of our first brief trip to Europe. As we waited in line we could see that some of our fellow travelers were profoundly distressed. We found out some of their plights and imagined what others might be. We have been blessed with a history that allows us to, at times, pause after the initial internal turmoil and recognize that the person in front of us may be in a much more difficult position. We can then begin to step outside of those physical confines and remember that we passed a hungry homeless man on the way to the airport and that hundreds of thousands died in earthquakes this year. We can call to mind that there are wars raging and bombs exploding lives and creating new orphans and widows and widowers every day.

It seems so trite to say, “It could be worse.” To remind ourselves, “at least we have each other, a home, the means to travel, our health, a job"…the list is endless for us. We want to balance a healthy validation of our own adversity with an awareness of the proverbial big picture. To infuse as much other-centered perspective as we can, to cool off the self-centered internal combustion, triggered by stressful unpredictable situations.

It is about perspective. Humans have been talking about this for millennia, as in the ancient adage of walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. When you have just a sliver of perspective it seems to open the door to understanding. As Thich Nat Hahn said, “understanding and love cannot exist without each other.” It must be understanding that allows for our loving nature to surface.

The next time life’s unpredictability waxes in an ostensibly negative direction, I hope to approach the next human being with this internal and external dialogue: “Let me get this straight. This unfortunate situation is out of your and my control. You are doing the best that you can, given how you arrived at this moment. I understand, and therefore loving compassion can be my default.”

If I can even scratch a little deeper into the surface of this lesson, I will be content. When our daughters surpass us in this lesson, we will have nothing of more consequence to impart to them.

MLK Day

PIP thoughts: February 1, 2010

Addy (our 2 year old) and I took our usual morning run through City Park on the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. day. She's a little angel, bundled up in her pink and purple snowsuit and nestled into her jogger that she is soon to outgrow. We roll past snow and ice, and brush past the lake at City Park on the way to our favorite roundabout. In it are statues of remarkable human beings; Mahatma Gandhi, Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks, Sojourner Truth and at the center, looking over his predecessors, is a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr.

My wife Tara and I always give thanks when we stroll past this place. We give thanks, not because he was a perfect human being. I think he would have been the first to dispute that notion. We give thanks because he carried the banner of a peaceful philosophy, based on love, that he championed with eloquence. Poetic non-violence was his weapon, and it stood up against fire hoses and terrorist bombs, nooses, jails, guns and history. Our girls' dreams can be limitless because he had a dream that fueled and punctuated a movement of people.

Some of you may have lived through this. Some of you heard him speak in person. For us, born after his time, we caught bits and pieces of the story in school. We might have caught his "I have a dream" speech every year on the radio around MLK day. A few years ago I realized that I knew almost nothing about his life except what I heard from that speech. I bought the audio book "A Call to Conscience". It is a compilation of recordings of his most important speeches with introductions by civil rights icons. It is the most amazing piece of audio that I own. It is hours of heart wrenching and uplifting poetic history, filled with lessons that we as a human race have yet to master. I've listened to it many times over.

That day I happened to put on his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech as Addy and I ran through the park. I love this excerpt and I thought I would share it with you.

“I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up.”

The “audacity to believe” is one of the many great legacies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement. It is a legacy that we must strive to pass on to our children.

Hope you all had a good MLK day.

If you're interested you can download the audio book, check it out from the library or buy the CD. Nothing takes the place of hearing his voice with the words.

-Bryan