Today Is: Stay Long Enough to Hear the Answer Day

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” – Dale Carnegie

It has been an early morning already. Seated in 31F, I stare blankly out the window mesmerized by the bright sunrise. My plane is to take off here shortly, at 7:40am EST (for those of you still sleeping like me that makes it 5:40am MST) With such an early flight I had to leave my hotel this morning at 4:30am EST (I’ll leave the time change up to you!) Needless to say I’m not wide eyed and bushy tailed just yet. If I had a bumper sticker on my rear right now it would read, “I’d rather be sleeping”. That is until I met the man at the security checkpoint. As I handed him my boarding pass and ID I greeted him with my friendliest “5 in the A.M. hello and asked “How are you?” He smiled and said, “I’m good,” then muttered loudly under his breath, “do you really care?” It’s early and my brain just isn’t up to speed yet but did I just hear him ask me, “Do you care?” I looked at him quizzically trying to piece it all together before I could say anything he handed back my things and said, “You have a good day Ms. Bucci.” I couldn’t just walk away; “Did you just ask if I care?” He grinned from ear to ear, “You caught that did you?” He said with a chuckle. My co-worker chimed in at this moment and said, “You don’t know who you’re talking to; she cares.” I smiled with my liver. We shared a moment right there in the Grand Rapids airport that I’ll be forever grateful for. It got me thinking; how many times do we ask someone how they are doing and not stay around long enough to hear the answer? How many times do we ask for something but rush through our day not allowing time to play its role? What prayers do we pray yet abandon when they do not happen as planned on our schedule? Thanks to my airport friend I learned a valuable lesson today:

When you ask someone a question, stay around long enough to hear the answer
Listen not only with your head but also with your heart
Care
Have patience; do not rush time nor wish it to go faster for someday you’ll wish you had more of it
And as my new friend Becky, sitting in seat 31D, said to me today, “Be present in your time zone.” Profound. Thanks Becky for your reminder and thank you to your mom too! (I hope you both read this)

“How much do we miss by going so fast, I wonder often; how much do we miss by worrying about arriving at the right destination rather than enjoying the view, so quickly passing it by; how much do we miss by not stopping to dip into that life, the one in front of us instead of the one ahead of us, by not recognizing that the destination is really a horizon, not a boundary.” – Patti Digh ‘Creative is a Verb’