“Do you have snacks I can buy?”
I’m not an in-air snacker, but we were already two hours into the plane being parked on the tarmac and the green juice and teensy salad I so daintily fashioned at my apartment hours prior were not going to hold me over to evening.
“We do, but I can’t sell you them until we actually get up into the air.”
Needless rule, ok, but not going to argue.
The flight attendant did inform me that she could, however, disclose the snacks identity so that I could mull over my decision until departure.
“Chocolate Chip cookies. A cheese plate. A bag of potato chips and fruit and nuts.”
Fruit + nuts, ok good.
“Now, we only ever get one or so of the ‘fruit and nuts,’ and if you ask me, at $4.49 they are way overpriced.”
Now, I did not ask her. But she is, after all, a flight attendant and just trying to do her job. Or kill time. We were, as already mentioned, two hours into our tarmac parking hold.
I considered whether I should make a move… whether it was even possible, to reserve said bag of (again, needlessly) under-stocked ‘fruit + nuts.’ I chose instead to take my chances.
The attendant continued. “If you ask me” (note, once more, I did not ask) “the potato chips are the best deal because that’s $3 for the bag and it’s this big.” She shows me, paralleling her fingertips as an equal sign spaced five inches apart, hovering over a nearby empty seat.
I smile. I thank. I head back to my seat.
So, this is interesting because now we can talk about perception.
In the stewardesses eyes, the potato chips are the best value since her criteria is: most square footage of food item in relation to how much currency is exchanged for said item.
My criteria were:
- Is it processed/healthy?
- How will I feel while eating it
- How will I feel after eating it?
- Am I really hungry enough to buy subpar airplane snacks or can I hold out until I can find proper nourishment?
I’m not saying potato chips are evil; they were just not something I wanted to choose to put in my body at that moment. Same grouping of food items. Two different perceptions.
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The night before, I gave a talk about the *art of suffering* to my peeps.
“Suffering is not in the fact, it is in the perception of the fact”
That’s verbiage given to this notion by my teachers, but the wording sounds a little wobbly to me—like it hasn’t been translated properly. The gist is, obviously, it’s only our perception that colors a situation to determine whether we designate it as “bad” or “good.”
At the end of my talk, together my peeps and I set an intention to bring on the suffering. To literally bring it to each of us, so we would have the opportunity to practice holding it, being aware of it, getting all cozy with it.
It’s been difficult to phase me lately; been that way for a while. Not to say that life and its ups and downs don’t happen—they’re everywhere, they just don’t seem to affect.
In order to protect those whom I love (those who don’t care to be as bloggity blog, soul-on-their-sleeve as I,) I keep most of the Duh-RAH-mah off this space. (also, why would I write about it if it’s not affecting me?) But trust me, it’s there.
So, the day after the talk, en route to the airport, I’m getting texts about how miserable my people are, meticulously documenting to me the suffering we agreed to collectively bring on, thinking: oh my poor peeps.
I lovingly encourage them to stop trying to distract from their suffering by texting me.
I thought (oh so chipper, obvi):
Huh, well maybe that’s it. Maybe I have officially escaped suffering. Maybe it’s time to stick a fork in me…?
Oh silly me. Suffering was brought to me surreptitiously. On the plane.
This winter, for those of you who don’t live on the East Coast of America, was the worst… (no hyperbole here) maybe ever. When the sun came out, there was far more than one: “what is that blazing bright ball in the sky?!?” facebook post that emerged.
The fruit + nut airplane day was an 80-degree New York City day.
The perfect day.
The first marvelous day of the year.
A day for sidewalk cafes and endless lunches or perhaps lounging waterside.
A day for all of my favorite things.
A day that might include—gosh, dare I say it? The first sancerre of the season?
It was inexplicably hot for spring and after an atrocious winter, the day was spectacular… as was to be the rest of the week in New York: finally the magic of spring had arrived,
and I…
there…
stuck
on that plane.
The shimmer of the day’s splendor was trapped
behind the heavy double paned plastic window my nose pressed against longingly;
so close, yet so far away.
No access to fruit, nuts… or even potato chips.
The first hour, I was fine.
Then, a friend texted me for a party in the city over the weekend.
Wouldn’t be there.
Couldn’t be his “non-date” in a cute one-shouldered dress and strappy sandals; I would be in a Midwest conference room.
Another texted: it was too bad I didn’t change my ticket to play in the sun with him
(as I had considered doing that morning, that is how awesome this day was)
because at the moment he was elbow deep in beer and Jimmy Buffett in the East Village.
And I…
I was stuck…
two hours…
on a tarmac at LaGuardia,
taking off for a week in Chicago,
which was going to be 40 degrees and raining.
Sequestered from the city, from the day of perfection…!
(Such a princess I know. Really Mags? FOMO is your suffering?)
But this is the mind. We can’t help it, can we?
Then I started to resist my suffering.
Still on tarmac, I called my sister to relay the delay, trying to garner pity. She told me in an unusually optimistic tone: there will be plenty of other 80-degree days in New York. Of course I knew this to be true.
Why was I irritable?
My mind: “Oh, no, you see, I am past this. I know suffering. I teach suffering! Suffering is my beeotch.”
I’m also a seriously champion traveler, so please add that in to the mind’s “defenses” of my irritability. (I can’t pitch a tent for shit, but I’m talking about efficiency in relation to glamour: I can look spectacular with minimal resources, those kinds of travel attributes… we all have our strengths.)
Champion traveling is all about rolling with the punches…. Two days stuck in rural India? An extended eight-hour layover in Japan? Flat tire in Fresno? Pshaw. Meant to be! But suddenly two hours on my hometown tarmac was ruthlessly unfair.
My mind had created the suffering out of the perception of what I was missing: the 80 degree day, a day of freedom, of love, a day ripped out of the musical HAIR and thrust onto the city streets.
I’m a pro at embracing the suffering when something huge happens, there my faith, my knowing, has a hold: “this is for me, this has purpose. ”
That day my suffering showed me where I was remiss. It’s in the small stuff lady.
I know I am making myself out to sound shallow and trite in this example, and I do this purposely to illustrate how pernicious our mind can be. Any moment of “arguing with what is,” equals resistance, equals suffering.
As soon as I allowed myself to feel ok to be irritated about it, to NOT BE the really good, friendly, spiritual lady just meditating politely in the window seat, (sans fruit, nuts and even, that great value, the potato chips) it shifted. When I let myself be annoyed, it was then and only then that my perception changed.
I didn’t change it. I allowed myself to be where I authentically was and it shifted automatically.
I couldn’t talk myself into feeling better about it, I had to be with the princess-y irritability.
And then, and only then, I realized I had subtly been trying to run away from the irritability rather than just experience it. I laughed at myself, thought, ok, so at this moment, I’m a princessy bitch and it instantly evaporated.
This is the key step that all of us miss when we are trying to barrage ourselves with self-improvement. I’ve been teaching my peeps to work with it on the big scale, but it needs to work anywhere and everywhere. That was my reminder.
We departed shortly thereafter.
I didn’t even have to decide about the fruit/nuts vs. chips because they gave us a biscuit gratis as apology for the delay.
My mind eased into an easy bliss.
By the time these rolled around—there was nothing blocking being able to revel in the beauty that they were, because I had, truly, gotten out of my own way.
