On Serendipity and Missed Opportunities

A few days ago, I was on a series of flights heading to an undisclosed destination (though for the sake of narrative, let's call it Grand Rapids).  As I was settling into my window seat on my last flight, an airline team member got on the intercom to announce that a passenger from the prior flight had left her cell phone on the plane and asked that everyone look in their seat back pockets for it.

There was, of course, no phone in my seat back pocket, but I did discover a pair of glasses that someone else had left behind.  The guy sitting in the aisle seat (nobody was in the middle seat, because COVID) offered to take them up to the flight attendant.  We then proceeded to have a slightly snarky exchange about people who can't manage to keep their possessions under control and how there really is no excuse for that--unless you are also managing kids on a flight.  That broke the ice and we started talking.

(Not long afterwards--or at least it didn't seem like very long because we were talking--the woman who lost her phone finally called it and a passenger found it--and the entire plane of people cheered.)

The thing you have to understand about me is that talking to strangers on a plane is one of the things I typically give great effort to avoid.  I will sleep, or I will read, or I will pretend to listen to something with headphones in order to avoid airplane small talk.  

I mean, I kid you not, on my first flight of this same day, a woman in the seat behind me spent literally the entire flight talking about her Lululemon leggings and shopping for Lululemon leggings and basically everything a person never wanted to know about the entire Lululemon legging connection.  (At least, she was talking about it before I fell asleep and again when I awoke at the end of that flight.)  I'm sorry if anyone reading this is a fan of overpriced yoga pants and therefore offended by my comments, but the inanity of her conversation was mind-numbing.

This guy, on the other hand, was kind of amazing to talk to.  He was smart and funny (I laughed more than I could remember having laughed in quite a while) and was the kind of guy who actually asked questions and listened and remembered things.  And he was very attractive.  Different from my usual type.  No ring.  And although I couldn't see all of his face due to the mask he was wearing (because COVID), he had piercing, deep blue eyes.  Even if the conversation had been bad, I could have looked into those eyes for days.  But the conversation wasn't at all bad.  It was really good.  

I can't remember the last time I had such a great conversation with a guy (on a plane or otherwise).

I think it surprised us both when the announcement came on that the plane was about to land.  He told me that he normally didn't talk to people on planes and that he really enjoyed our conversation.  And there was a moment where I really thought he was going to ask for my number, but either I gave a bad signal or he decided not to for whatever other reason, and he didn't.  And in a similarly fleeting moment, I thought about offering my number, but I chickened out and didn't.  And the moment passed.

And now we are in two different cities in this state, will be leaving this state on different days, and will each go back to our respective homes in different cities in different states, most likely destined to never see each other again.  Because let's be realistic: the whole "if the universe means for you to meet again you will meet again" mantra really only works in John Cusack movies.

I'm kicking myself for not at least offering him my number (because what's the worst that could have happened--he'd say he's not interested and at least I'd know?).

He dropped enough information that I could look him up and reach out if only I could convince myself that doing that wasn't weird and stalker-like.  Just as I gave him enough information that he could do the same, if he wanted to. 

Most likely, this blog post is the last anyone will hear about this encounter.

But if nothing else, that conversation has caused me to hope once more that maybe, just maybe, all of the decent, intelligent, handsome guys aren't married or gay or completely unavailable in some other way.  Maybe great guys really do still exist.  Maybe there is hope that another such serendipitous moment might occur with someone in the future.

And hopefully, I'll make better decisions when that happens.

..."And Your Spouse"

I think that parties that invite you "and your spouse" are a slap in the face to single people everywhere. 

It's like you don't even exist--you didn't even warrant the accommodation of "plus 1."  It is so literally inconceivable to the person doing the inviting that someone on the guest list might be without a spouse that it doesn't even cross their mind that there is anything wrong with inviting spouses.

It's American church culture, for one thing, which by extension, is the culture I work in.  If you're married, you check a box.  You make sense to people.  You start dating someone, and sure, you're not married yet, but you at least still make sense--and now everyone can pester you about when you're going to get married.  But you become single again, and suddenly, you don't check any boxes.  You don't fit anymore with all the couples--and they are everywhere.  Because in your culture, it doesn't make sense not to be part of a couple.  And most people like to fit in.  (Or they just want to be coupled.  I don't know.)  And if you are that person who doesn't want to be shackled in that way, you just don't fit. 

So, what do you do?  Do you graciously decline?  Do you accept and attend solo in a sea full of couples?  Do you accept and take a "plus 1" in spite of the fact that the person isn't your "spouse"?

There's this party that I've never been invited to before.  And for the four+ years that the ex and I officially dated, he never took me because I "wasn't his wife" and it was for [his group of employee types] and their spouses only. 

(In retrospect, that tells you much more about him than about the event, doesn't it?)  But the party.  I don't really care about parties, generally speaking, but it always stung that I couldn't go because I wasn't his little wife. 

Because I wasn't ready to be his little wife. 

Because I didn't want to be his little wife.

And now this year, I am invited on my own merits, except I no longer want to go.  Because of him, on one level.  And because of the general awkwardness of being the only person without a spouse in a room full of spouses, on another level.

I hate Christmas so much right now, and it's not even Thanksgiving.

Day Lilies

I have these lovely day lilies in my front flower bed.  (If you know me well, you know that flowers aren't really my thing, but there's something about the day lilies that always makes me smile.)

They are spring embodied in fragile flesh.

Every year, they rise from the ground, golden phoenixes from the ashes of winter.  Hopeful.  Alive.

But the thing that gets me is that even as they begin to bloom in the spring, they also begin to die.  By the time I get around to weeding around them, there are always multiple dead strands among the living.  It used to bother me, pulling away those brown, dried-up pieces.  It seemed heartless, wrong.

The more I think about it, though, it's the opposite.  You have to prune away what is dead to make room for the living.

And every time I cull the dead leaves, life erupts in glorious splendor, as though they were just waiting for the opportunity to be free from the stranglehold of death before they could bloom.

I wonder about that.  I wonder what happens when you are brave enough to cut away the parts of your life that are dead or no longer growing. 

What change then comes? 

"When You Are Careless...."

One of my favorite movies this year was The Greatest Showman.  Seriously.  I saw it three times in the theater and have already watched it once since purchasing it.  It's destined to become a long-term favorite.

But there's one aspect of the story that always leaves me frustrated.  SPOILER ALERT.

It's the storyline between P. T. Barnum and Jenny Lind.  Now, I don't know the real historical story--I'm just going off the film.  The filmmakers build up this fascination that Barnum has with Lind, along with what I consider to be a mutual flirtation that escalates until the moment in which she tries to take things to the next level and he realizes that he needs to go home to his wife.

Seemingly everyone I've talked to about this movie views this scene as a victory for morality because the man stayed faithful to his wife.

I disagree.

What I see in this scene is a man who lets himself become infatuated with a woman who is not his wife.  Rather than fighting it, he crafts a set of circumstances in which he is frequently alone with her.  He gazes at her.  He travels with her.  She leans her head on his shoulder while in the coach.  And the tension builds.

He consistently leads her on, making her believe that he is interested in her, but he changes his demeanor in the moment in which he rejects her advances to make her believe that she is the crazy one for having fallen for him.  She responds badly, which I think is understandable.

She is not without blame--she allowed herself to get emotionally involved with a married man and then threw herself at him--but he is the one who led her on.  He is the one who should be accountable for the greatest portion of blame, and yet, in the film, he is not.

She is right, I think, when she tells him, "When you are careless with other people, you bring ruin upon yourself."  And although kissing him in front of the cameras was mean and an exercise of poor judgment on her part, I can kind of understand why she did it. 

What if Barnum, in the moment of reckoning, had given her a real and honest apology instead of mumbling something about his wife and needing to go home?  Not some vague story, not some maybe-it's-an-apology-if-you-read-between-the-lines pseudo-apology to make him look like a good guy without addressing any of the real issues at hand, but a real, heartfelt response covering what he did and what he was responsible for.

Sometime to the effect of, "I am an idiot.  I lacked self-control and behaved toward you in ways that I shouldn't have, even though technically, I didn't cross any lines.  I have led you on, and I am the person responsible for leading you to respond to me as you have.  I made bad choices, and they hurt you, and I know I can't undo the confusion and pain that you must be feeling right now, but I am sorry and will do anything I can to make it right."

But we don't get that in the movies, do we? 

A Different Story

I learned this evening that a few days ago, a guy I knew from high school--(three years ahead of me--he was a senior when I was a freshman), a guy that I once had a crush on, a guy who was all the things you wanted to look up to at a young and impressionable age--took his life.

What makes the world grow so dark that a person can't see another way out?

It baffles me.  I can't speak to knowing every sort of pain that exists, but I've walked my own dark roads at certain times in my life.  I can't imagine, even in the worst of those moments, wanting to end it all. 

So much hurt for so many people.  Wasted and useless.

It could have been a different story.  It should have been a different story.

On Mindset and the Woman at the Airport

A few years ago, I was waiting in an airport that was small enough that you kind of had to sit near your gate because there was nothing better to do.

It was evening, and flights were delayed, and emotions were high.

And there was this couple, maybe in their upper-20s or lower-30s, with a toddler.  I don't even remember what set them off, but they started fighting, and the fight turned very loud and very public, very quickly. 

The woman said something about an online course she was taking, and the man just tore into her, verbally berating her, telling her how stupid she was, how she had no business being in college, how she was just going to fail at that like she had failed at everything else in her life.

And she started crying.  And no one did anything.  Including me.  I still regret that.

Why am I talking about this?  There's this course that I've been revising, an online learning strategies type of course, and one of the key elements I've been weaving into the content is related to mindset, which I believe is critical to academic (and life!) achievement.  In all honesty, I've been working on the course long enough that I utterly loathe looking at it right now.  I don't want to finish it, even though I'm down to just the final tweaks.  I keep putting it off.  Most days, I just...can't.

But then I think about that woman at the airport.  The one who was trying to better herself.  The one who had an abusive, negative, self-defeating voice literally screaming in her ear in a public place, repeatedly telling her that she was dumb and incapable and a failure.  The negative voices in her world must have been so loud--I can't even imagine.

I think of her, and and I think of other very real and very scary stories I've heard from some students in our program, then I think: we have to change this.  Maybe we can't change the people around them, but we can help them change the way they view the world.  We can help them find voices in their world (and in their heads) that are supportive and positive and believe in the seemingly impossible.

If there is one takeaway that I want these students to walk away with, I want them to believe that change is possible.  They don't have to be whatever message everyone has always spoken over them.  They don't have to be helpless.  They don't have to be stuck in the same circumstances without hope. 

You can change your mindset, and you can change your world.  With God's help.  I believe that with all of my heart.

Racing to Beat the Devil

There's a strange sense of clarity that comes while you're running.  Sometimes, anyway.  It's like the world stops--the clock doesn't, thank God--but everything inside your head turns simultaneously fuzzy and focused.

Some days, it leads to profound thoughts.  Other days, you find you're racing to beat the devil.

At least, that's what Stephen King would call it, I think.

Silver flew and Stuttering Bill Denbrough flew with him; their gantry-like shadow fled behind them.  They raced down Up-Mile Hill together; the playing cards roared.  Bill's feet found the pedals again and he began to pump, wanting to go even faster, wanting to reach some hypothetical speed--not of sound but of memory--and crash through the pain barrier.

He raced on, bent over his handlebars; he raced to beat the devil.  (Stephen King, IT, 233)

Today was one of those days for me.  So many things.  An amalgamation of thoughts, worries, dreams, and desires.  I like to joke sometimes that normal people wouldn't last a day inside my head.  It's like the dream world in the movie Inception--sure, the possibilities are endless, but watch out, buddy, because it will turn on you, and it will eat you alive.

Normal people, of course, don't have years of practice with living inside my head.  I do.  And most days, I hold the villains at bay.  But every now and then, I find myself racing to beat the devil.  Harder and harder and faster and faster because as long as I'm running, it all gets pushed away.  And it needs to be pushed away.

Problem is, at some point you have to stop running.

He was going uphill again now, speed bleeding away.  Something--oh, call it desire, that was good enough, wasn't it?--was bleeding away with it.  All the thoughts and memories were catching up--hi, Bill, gee, we almost lost sight of you for a while there, but here we are--rejoining him, climbing up his shirt and jumping into his ear and whooshing into his brain like little kids going down a slide.  He could feel them settling into their accustomed places, their feverish bodies jostling each other.  Gosh!  Wow!  Here we are inside Bill's head again!  Let's think about George!  Okay!  Who wants to start?

You think too much, Bill.

No--that wasn't the problem.  The problem was he imagined too much."  (Stephen King, IT,  235)