Losing it at the Gate

 

I did an experiment this summer. What would happen if held to all my habits every day?

• Doing a series of three or four 90-120 second breath holds (each after 30 deep breaths)
• Doing a one hour session of Vinyasa yoga.
• Doing a 15-30 minute session of Yoga Nidra guided meditation. 
• Taking a 2 minute cold shower, rotating in the shower every 30 seconds.
  
• Going to an outdoor class in the neighborhood from 8 to 9.
• Journaling 45 minutes
• Inversion table--hanging upside down and then turning upright 10 times 
• Fasting from Wednesday night to Thursday night once a week

What happened was I got a lot of Vitamin D and some color, from the hour in the morning sun that will no doubt fade to pallor by late October. I probably got better (more flexible, stronger) at yoga because my body was better at yoga from all the yoga I was doing.

It's harder to say about other effects, but I was grateful for what seemed to me like more good things than I could even remember to name in my life (no doubt a byproduct of beginning each journaling session with 7 gratitudes). I went through a series of experiences this summer where I had to do something challenging: serve as a Montessori faculty instructor preparing and leading sessions I had never taught that took 5 or more hours to prepare and 4 to deliver; help a family member in the time before and after surgery as their main person in the hospital; help lead a songwriting workshop with 8 people in Canada; unexpectedly serve as substitute instructor at the Yoga class and offer a one hour class effectively enough that I was invited to be a substitute instructor.

I feel like I have been in and am in training. For what? For being able to silence interior doubts and handle whatever comes up. For being able to operate under the presumption of being strong, flexible, confident and capable. To be able to slow down and attend to difficulty with calm noticing. You never get there, you just train toward it. But for what I was asked to do during my calm quiet unhurried teacher's Summer Vacation--something on the level of being retired, I could handle it and feel happy. Keeping fit, healthily fed, well-sunshined, hydrated, unstressed, creative and optimistic and grateful in regular life is a tall order, but as far as summer vacation goes, for most of it,  I was effectively enlightened--the exceptions being few but notable--when I lost my temper and exclaimed, "this is b.s.!" (actually I didn't abbreviate it)  to the airline gate ticket taker when told I had to go back through the security gauntlet, wait in line to be x-rayed and barefoot with pockets emptied, just because due to national security theater and a hedge fund squeezing profits out of the airline resulting in the loss of the ability of passengers to take carry on baggage without checking and charging it. The only way to go pay for that baggage check was to go through this utterly dehumanizing, encounter with x-rays, hands up, armed uniformed personnel checkpoint, after running the gauntlet of 4 days mostly coming back and forth from the hospital because of coming to town to help out with a family semi-emergency. In that moment, I wasn't enlightened at all. I failed. My patience ruptured, my sense of personal grievance and outrage hijacked me. Also, I regret the lack of respect I showed to the person who was doing their job, while some sense of entitlement gave me the audacity to think I could vent my anger, with them or at least at their counter. I'm sorry now. I apologized then. I really hope I never do such a thing ever again in my life. She said, "It doesn't bother me. I'm built to take it," she said. which makes me even more remorseful, even now. Certainly, I wasn't the first person to express frustration about this airline's policy to this representative of the airline, just the most recent.

I'm not making excuses, but I understand why I lost my patience. There's an inner self-repression one experiences when submitting to air travel is almost enough to make one never want to fly. For 14 years I managed to avoid it. Sitting side by side with three other people, all strapped in for hours, waiting to be given a soda or cheese crackers, and breathing recycled, pressurized air, tilting, bumping, having the captain turn on the seat belt sign, anxiously descending, bumping, engines roaring in reverse, hoping to live while helplessly going from 600 miles an hour to 10 miles an hour is something I'd be fine with never doing again. 

On behalf of the captain and flight crew thank you for traveling with us today, we know you had a choice and we're glad you chose yadda yadda airlines, they say. I say, to this minute as I write these words, I am convinced I should have driven the 10 hours instead of flying the one hour and 32 minutes. It would have been cheaper and less humiliating, and I would have had my car with me instead of having to rent one for $500 for four days or re-book my flight for an extra day at an additional cost of the original round trip ticket itself.

I imagine many people who fly on planes have the feeling of having the limits of their patience tested, then some unexpected thing happens--there's a weather cancellation, unexpected maintenance delay or overbooked seating, or a crying baby and they flip out over a minor thing eventually. Again, no excuses, it just feels good to acknowledge this, because otherwise I myself forget why I went all lizard brain (or is it mammal if emotions are involved?) and became overwhelmed like a child who hasn't quite lived long enough to grasp the larger perspective that we are all one, and that nothing is personal, perfect or permanent, and that only love and kindness should be our goal, as we long for them when they are out of sight and mind, as our home and refuge from all our human suffering. Until the next time I lose it: Om shanti, shanti, shanti.