In Releasing and Allowing I Found Perfection!

This past weekend I did a number of things for the first time. I visited Lansing, Michigan, flew on Southwest, visited three new airports and one new terminal - Chicago's Midway Airport, Detroit Metropolitan (not the one in the city), and Baltimore's International Airport (if I've been there before, I no longer remember it), and Terminal E in Boston's Logan International Airport. I learned how to play Cribbage and a new form of Solitaire, compliments of our gracious hosts in MI, and I recognized, once again, the beautiful way life flows when I let go, allow, and just be.

A view of the wing from the back
 of the plane.

It happened as I was boarding the flight to Chicago's Midway Airport on Saturday morning in Boston. Flying Southwest for the first time, I had never experienced the freedom and anxiety involved in choosing my own seat on an airplane. After years of having my seat assigned on every flight I ever took, the experience of choosing my own seat was truly novel. Yes, I have often checked-in on line and chosen my seat from a seating chart, however, that process is much different than standing on the plane, seeing many available seats and having to choose from what looks like at least fifty reasonable options.

In the moment or two it took for me to walk past the first few rows of seats, where I knew I did not want to sit, I felt anxious about the choice looming before me. As I looked around, I felt more than saw where I wanted to sit. It was a window seat on the left side of the plane in front of the exit row, on the front side of the wing. Realizing that this particular seat was close to the engine, which may be loud during the flight, my husband asked me if I wanted to choose another seat. I looked at the other options, felt settled in my choice, and sat down.

At the time I chose my seat, the plane was parked at the gate in Boston under overcast skies of an arriving storm and I had no way of assessing whether my seat was favorable or not. About thirty or forty minutes into the flight as my morning chill from riding public transportation to the airport began to ease, I realized the divine perfection of my choice. I was seated exactly where the sun shone off of the curved, highly reflective forward position of the wing such that it warmed my face and body during the entire flight to Chicago's Midway airport. The seat I chose, with no more than a "feeling" that it was where I needed to be, was the only seat positioned such that the sun's angle in the sky at that particular time of day would warm my chilly body. I knew in that moment that I did not and could not have determined with my mind that that particular seat was perfect for me. In releasing the initial anxiety I felt at making a potential "wrong" seat choice and allowing my body to choose for me, I landed myself exactly where I needed to be: warm and grateful. It was a wonderful flight.