I got to the stopover city with no problem, but then found that there was a problem.  The flight was delayed.  Apparently, one of the stewardesses was late getting to the flight, so it delayed my flight, which was supposed to leave around 7pm.

Then, when we finally got on the plane at 8:45pm, the pilot announced that a few of the bags had been mis-tagged (or something ridiculous) and they had to pull the bags off the plane to re-tag them.

Then they had to pull more bags off.

Then they had to come back and do more things with the bags, but nobody is sure what they were doing.

Finally, at about 9:50pm, we were off and running, but somehow a 55 minute flight took 85 minutes…but we made it!

Now, I know the Internet is full of rants about the airline industry, and I won’t add too much to that.  I guess my only point is that flying has become such an awful experience, it seems to generate its own negative energy.

Seriously.

It’s come to the point where everything is so intense, late, expensive, and annoying, that it really does become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I tried to make every moment in that plane a meditation.  I tried to induce relaxation instead of reaction.  It was hard…and I failed on multiple occasions, but the important thing is that when I failed, I felt myself failing.  I was aware of the failure, and I tried to get myself back on track.

Meditation…relaxation…failure…awareness…meditation…

It became somewhat of an internal mantra…something to which I could cling while my day drowned in a sea of frustration.

But I’m here.  It’s all good.  It’s just a memory…

But how I got here?  Well, I’ll try to keep that mantra going.

It was nice!

We played with Matchbox cars.  You know the last time I did that?

Years ago.

We played today with cars, trucks, convertibles…and they rode up and down a little construction lot.  It brought back some great memories.  There was innocence and focus, intensity and laughter.

It was all there, and all so simple!

All the cars I used to play with are somewhere in storage, I think.  No idea where .  It’s funny…when I was young, I couldn’t get enough of them, and now, I couldn’t even find them.

Is that tragic?

I’m not sure.  I’ve moved on to more complex toys and forms of entertainment.  I don’t want to knock those things, but I can’t help but remember there was a time when a one dollar car was just as fun as a Wii…When wooden blocks brought the same smile as an iPhone…And when a slide was just as thrilling as a drive north.

I’m not sure what happened between “way back when” and “right now”…Is there a fundamental difference?  Am I the same person?  What really matters to me today?

We can all ask these questions, I think.  As we age, we are more and more pressed by responsibility and, possibly, a growing angst around the meaning of life.

Where are we?  Who are we?

Maybe those answers can be found by going back into memory and re-discovering who we were…or what we used to play with.

-josh