It is currently 6:16am, and I have been up for 24 hours or more.

For over a year now I have been planning to visit one of my battle buddies (army terms for friend), who lives out in Portland, Oregon. She and I have been in continuous contact since basic training graduation last August. I have been waiting and waiting and….waiting for this day to finally come. I, of course, was so eager and excited, yet I waited until the absolute last minute to pack my bags. I was going to be gone for 5 days, so I had to plan each outfit and make sure I have all the extras. I finally was on my way to Indianapolis to catch my flight later that night around 8pm. After arriving at the Indianapolis International Airport, my excitement grew to a whole new level. I just wanted to be there already!

“Your flight has been cancelled, and we are sorry for the late notice.”

LATE NOTICE?! I just drove two hours to catch a flight I have been waiting a year to catch and you waited until I came to check in to tell me that the flight is cancelled, and you can’t even give me a reason as to why? Breathe, Chance, breathe.

After an hour, I got my flights rescheduled and I was going to leave at 7:55am the next day. My patience had quite honestly been tested to the fullest by this point. So, here I am once again sitting in the same airport waiting for my flight to leave. I have been sitting here for about an hour, and I have realized two different things. The first being that there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of people walking past me that I never knew existed, and in this very moment is the only time I will ever know that they exist. They have lives, maybe they had a cancelled flight, too? They are going places they have been waiting a while to go to. They are people I never existed up until this point, but they have taught me so much. They have taught me that the human population is one that is so unknown. Yes, we have sociology and different studies about how the human mind works, and how different groups of people interact, but until you see it with your very own eyes, all those studies are just words.

The second thing I have learned while sitting here is that people are like planes. I am sitting next a window. watching many planes come and go. We are like those planes. We are a body, a vessel. We are “filled,” (maybe more so mentally) with many people that come and go. We are embodied by many different emotions that change each and every day. We get messy, but we can always clean up. And when there are days its harder to “clean up,” (whatever that means to you) we have genuine people in this world that will help us. Each and every day we have a take off, and a landing. And each day those take offs and landings look different. We need fuel. Emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical fuel. For me, that spiritual fuel is God. So, I will continue by saying we need a Pilot. In this life, you cannot do it alone. You need a Pilot, whoever your Pilot is. Just like a plane, our engines will one day give out. Now, that is a long time from now, and just like a plane we have many people to meet, many places to visit, and many memories to make before our engines turn off.

Isn’t it crazy how a terrible cancelled flight turned into a beautiful realization about this life?