The flight back to the U.S.

I had less than one hour to get from one end of the Zurich Airport all the way to the other side where my flight was leaving for the USA. I was breezing up the escalators, laughing at myself and others as we pushed and herded like cows at the feed to get on the shuttle, and calmly – and quickly – strode in the direction of the gate. Then I saw security. I was doomed. But I got through, and continued. Thirty minutes. Not until boarding – until scheduled takeoff.
Then, the forms to fill out for exiting the country. The gate was just there, just past my reach, and people were filing onto the plane, while I frantically filled in my name, my emergency contact, and for once didn’t care about whether or not I had an ugly signature.

I got to the line, which, as it turns out, was still quite long. The announcer came on, and I swear, they always either have the volume way too low you can’t hear a thing, or way too loud you can’t understand a word. I didn’t realize they were reading names until an American girl behind me realized her name had been called.
Ugh. . . I thought. . .I DO NOT want to deal with this right now. They had probably read my name, but I was so close to getting my boarding pass scanned, I figured that if there was some issue, I could deal with it then – and if not, I had saved a few minutes.

The ticket sucked into the machine, stopped, made a weird beeping sound. The woman at the desk looked at it, said, “Oh, there’s been just a slight change.” And handed me a blue (and definitely more official-looking) ticket. I glanced at it without a thought, and started toward the plane, voicing aloud that my seat had been changed, that I liked the window seat, and that it sure better still be a window seat.

It wasn’t until I reached the plane, making sure to touch the outside of the aircraft before entering for good luck (ok, so I do have one superstition – I BLAME MY SISTER), that I glanced at the ticket again to check my seat, and noticed the one word at the top that I hadn’t seen - “Business.”
There’s no way, I thought – and sure enough, I reached row 10 and an empty, roomy, business class seat awaited me – along with a flight attendant offering my choice of champagne , juice, or water. Still in shock, I chose juice. Of course, I couldn’t change my mind, I wanted to make it look like I belonged there. . .so I just had my juice and resolved to have plenty of free wine with my meal. But as I sat on the plane, I began to think, and thinking leads to making metaphors out of life and finding profound meaning in them.
I’m serious.

And I thought of this business class thing as heaven. (A rough estimate, of course).
But really, think about life. We’re in such a hurry, rushing toward a goal that we are comfortable with, that we know we like (such as a window seat, because we don’t get up on flights and we like to lean against the wall and look out the window), that we get annoyed when anything upsets it – like having our seat changed. We notice the change, we just hope that the change doesn’t ruin our own plans too much.

We make a fool of ourselves, complaining about the possibility of not having a window seat – when we don’t realize that not only does a window seat still await us, but a window seat that has a foot rest, a personal tv, all the food and wine you can want, and comes complete with your own socks and a toothbrush – and lotion and lip balm in the bathroom. And the best part of it all, we didn’t pay for it, we never expected it, we never did anything to deserve it – and yet somehow, someone decided that a seat in Business class was ours. And not only did we do nothing to get it – but it all happened while we were rushing to make sure all our own plans went smoothly and we got to our comfy economy seat on time.

And let’s take it one step further – yes, it was quite a nice surprise to find myself, after all that stress and rush, with plenty of time to board and a luxury seat. But I imagine what it would have been like had I already known what awaited me?

I probably would have breathed a little more. I probably would have enjoyed a leisurely stroll through the airport. I probably wouldn’t have complained that the window seat I had reserved so far in advance had been changed. And I would have had the peace of mind to know to order champagne. Not only would have enjoyed all it took to get to my flight, I would have enjoyed the flight even more, even if it was simply the difference between orange juice and a glass of champagne.

So, do you know what awaits you? It just might be better than you planned.