On certain occasions airports can be the most interesting places to observe the very best and worst of human behaviour, and this week I unwittingly witnessed some of the worst.
I was taking the plane from Palmerston North to Auckland when the announcement came that Auckland was closed due to fog. Subsequently, we were being re-routed to Tauranga after which we would suffer a three hour bus trip to Auckland airport. This created consternation for most of us, but one couple seemed quite prepared to make a human sacrifice. The victim was the inoffensive and well mannered woman booking people in. However, I must have missed something about her because apparently she was the evil cause of the fog in Auckland and ought to have done something about it. She had no right to stop them catching their connecting flight to Hawaii. There was obviously a deep conspiracy at work.
I found myself wondering what she might do? Perhaps an anti fog dance out on the airfield. Maybe if she rang head office it would all be taken care of. Alas she didn’t do either of these things so the anger just escalated.
What is it that creates these kinds of responses? Why do people live their lives on a hair trigger? Lovely, happy, smiling people one minute and then rabid, abusive and unreasoning the next? It’s obvious. We don’t plan for the unexpected anymore.
When I was a kid power cuts were semi regular. If we travelled in our old Hillman Husky from Wellington to Auckland we expected the car to breakdown at some point, the question was always, “Where?” These days we have an expectation that nothing ought to go wrong. If it does, then someone should be held accountable and perhaps shot.
Maybe I just accept things too easily. Maybe I’m just a wet blanket or a doormat to be walked over, but if I was flying to Hawaii, I think I would travel to Auckland long before the connecting flight. Why? Because contrary to irrational opinion, Air New Zealand employees cannot control the weather and if the plane is broken I would rather wait for one that might make the distance.
As I though about my own responses to unexpected change I realised that I tend to treat my life as travel log in advance: “I will do this, then I will do that” and so on. It’s all a bit prepackaged. Yet the truth is quite different. Life is more akin to an unfolding adventure.
Jesus said we shouldn’t only think about the benefits of the future, we need to see the gifts of the present. When life is a daily adventure then loss in one things means gain in another.
If we see life as a stunning but unpredictable escapade full of daily gifts, it will draw the best from us. If we see it as a prepackaged tour then it’s unpredictability will call from within the very worst. I want to live the former.
Digby Wilkinson, 2009