Let’s see how trite I can get…

I spent Tuesday night virtually accompanying my daughter across various time zones as she navigated an eventful trip home. The trip was planned, but the route involved unknown airports and train connections due to a prolonged pilot strike that had caused the cancelation of a more known itinerary. In short: life.

When she finally arrived home, on Samsø, at the exact time we had planned, I thought: Isn’t this just life! There are delays, real and potential missed connections, some losses, some stalling, but ultimately we all reach the same point: home. In the meantime, we get to express love and joy and grief and longing, and while we can’t change the destination, we can choose to enjoy the view.

I have done my share (and more) of international traveling in my lifetime, and I am sure I will do more. I know how hard it is to stay centered through delays, to let go of the anxiety of missing the planned connection. But with time I have gotten better at separating my feelings about these things (delays can objectively be annoying) from what I cannot control (the fact that they happen at all).

I am working on transferring this lived experience to my life overall. Right now, for example, living through a heatwave in New York City that makes it hard to breathe, the roses still bloom, the trees still reach for the sunlight. The view is still beautiful. And that can be true even as I know that we caused this weather and that we have urgent work to do to turn it around.

Life is a journey is as trite an expression as they come. But it is fairly accurate. We are all on our journey home.