Practice

Last night a friend called from the O'Hare Airport. On her way back from a business trip, she was delayed another 90 minutes. She was exhausted, bored and frustrated. After all, with the newly rescheduled flight, she would get home after 1 AM, and her plans for an early start on Saturday were crumbling.

This scenario is so familiar. I would have coached her on how this is an opportunity to practice "presence": be where you are when you're there; there's no place else to go. But instead I listened, just listened. I realized her time delayed in the airport was not different from my time delayed in driving through Boston traffic. I have for so long been on automatic in traffic (I pride myself on how well I maneuver through jams, bragging how I learned from New York taxi drivers), I forget that my cleverness often fails when there are no spaces to fill, just gridlock.

How much time (life) I have wasted sitting in traffic fuming, grinding away my peaceful inner self for something over which I had no control. Every once in awhile, I remember to practice. It's gift to accept time on its own terms; it's pure pleasure to stay alive and well through these moments of frustration. I'm on my way to the bank: I want to practice if there's a long line. Peace brothers and sisters.