The Airport Practice

An Ode to Peace During Holiday Travel

“The flight will depart on schedule or it will be delayed. The connection will be made or missed. Tomorrow will be spent with family barbecuing and swimming in the lake, or it will be spent curled in the fetal position, mini-pretzel crumbs clinging to my beard. I have zero power. Zero influence. I’m at the mercy of large and inscrutable forces. Rather than fuss and fret, rant and rave, I’m going to walk circles- silently- calmly - as long as necessary.” - Leath Tonino

I wake up and the first thing I do is drink water. I love water, lots of water. Hydrate or die-drate, that’s my motto. Then I sit (meditate if you like that better). If I sit before water I’ll just be thinking about why I didn’t drink water before I sat, and then I’ll be on a giant tangent about how privileged and blessed I am to even have clean(ish) water (you know, microplastics and what not), and then it’s too late… So, I drink water, and then I sit.

I sit because good habits make good people, or something like that. For fourteen years I have been sitting, meditation and my mornings have become symbiotic, or dependent on each other, it’s a fine line. I want to sit but also I need to sit. I sit to cultivate a comfort with the unknown of the day. This morning, I would like to sit for my usual 35 minutes, but I have a flight to catch, so I sit for 11 minutes. “Get in what you can,” I say.

I packed the night before so I’m ready to call that uber immediately post meditation and one final glass of water (planes dry you out, stay hydrated).

There is far more traffic this morning than I anticipated (what’s that thing they say about assumptions making an ass out of u & me? Who’s they? you know, they). Can traffic ever truly be predicted? Can anything ever be truly predicted? Just because the water always boils doesn’t mean it will boil today.

“This traffic is bad. What time is your flight, are you gonna be okay?” Says the Uber driver. “Yeah, I’ll be good, I’m gonna be fine,” I say unconvincingly and sweating.

I can’t really say, “Mind your business and drive faster!” I can but I imagine he would drive slower.

I arrive at the airport and with each agonizing inch that the car gets closer to my terminal I can feel this tightness in my breath and body. I can feel fear creeping up in me, a panic of missing or losing something. Finally at Terminal 4, I hop out the car and the pressure isn’t becoming any less.

The airport is packed today; even the TSApre line is long. Anxiety is building in me. I can feel the anxiety in the building as well. It’s in the air of this place. In the shoe removals, laptop examinations, hand swabbing’s, full body scans, people walking at a frantic pace just to stand in more lines, carrying heavy things because checking bags costs too much, wondering if they packed too much or too little, what has been forgotten and what is not needed. Oh and now, they have facial recognition - Minority Report hear we come.

In an airport, I always feel the attachments, the desires, and the inability to be soft… I feel people who are all headed to the same destination and yet are so attached to the inches that they have claimed on a security line. Something in the airport tells us, “Hurry hurry hurry, there isn’t enough.” The rush to stand on lines, the rush to stand more or sit more, rushing to move slowly, rushing to get nowhere, the rush to rush. The lines, where people get so close to the person in front of them, as if their space must be protected at all cost. The confusion when people shove their oversized bags into undersized compartments. The high prices, the signs to purchase more and more, the clear distinctions of capitalism and class, the fear, lack and not-enoughness shoved into our faces. That rush and stress infecting each and every one of us. Inching up to the gate as they call each zone. I can feel the iron grip of this place. The scarcity - an airport is a scarce-city, an in-between / liminal space that shakes us up, somewhere between where we came from and where we hope we get to. And for most of us, we aren’t even in control, I don’t know about you, but I’m not flying the plane.

On todays flight I lost my pinkie ring, again, my second one in a month; pretty sure I am not supposed to have a pinkie ring. My turmeric ginger tea bag exploded in my thermos, and my TV screen on the plane doesn’t work. So I have to sit for six hours wondering what kind of karma this is that I’m paying for and what I’ve done to deserve it, because I must have done something, right?

It’s at this moment I decide to go through my calendar and delete all the events my ex and I shared for our future: September, the graduation in Mexico, October, the Leon Bridges concert in San Diego, November, the wedding in Hudson valley.

Simultaneously, I’m mentally planning how I’m going to call customer service and complain about my inflight screen not working. Because flying in the sky in a leather seat isn’t enough, I have a right to inflight entertainment as well. I’m rehearsing my monologue, just how I’m going to turn all this anger in me into a heaping $100 Airline voucher. Take that!

The flight attendant offers me a beverage, he can tell I’m on the verge of tears, yes, I’m on the verge of tears. I can’t seem to figure out what’s happening in me. Just earlier I was mentally curious, maybe even judgmental, wondering, “how can people drink so early in the morning?” An hour a half later with less possessions than I arrived with, no tea, no ring, no entertainment to escape too, just here, forced to sit here, no will to read, just steeping in all this distress... In that moment I drink and I write this:

“This is not my temple. This is not my Sangha or my place of worship. This is not what I would call a place of peace... and yet, because this is my 6th plane in a month, this must become my mirror, my altar, my moment. This is the best time and best place for practice. Chop wood, carry water - like sweeping the temple grounds over and over and over again until one day it just clicks. This plane, these airports, these people, they can become my peace. Together. Together we are all here sitting with our unanswered questions and neurosis, desires and stories, chaos and unmade decisions and unmade beds, together we are all doing our absolute best.”

That’s what I want to remember in these wild moments, we are all doing our best! We are all doing our absolute fucking best. (I curse because it requires that emphasis and that French). We’re all trying our absolute best.

It’s one thing to cultivate peace while meditating for 35min with a timer, in my safe space, on my comfy cushion. It’s another to bring that morning meditation with me into the chaotic moments of my life as well. To remember that I can sit, breathe, and still open my heart in the unease and discomfort. In the most chaotic places there is my alter and my cushion. Here, in the middle of it all is my practice of liberation. Because, who wants to just ride planes, share tight spaces, travel and travel and never truly arrive? Not me.

So, this is me remembering, again and again (because I will forget and fall into the rush of it all), that the airport and airplane and many spaces in between are my Sangha, my temple, my church, my place of worship, and that all of its members are my community, vital and fundamental.

Liberations true home is always in between. It’s not the landing and departures, it’s the in between. The airplane and the airport are that in between… I think (I hope) I have arrived. xo

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