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How An 80 Year-Old Woman’s Tears Righted My Spiritual Ship
I’d just returned to my seat from a pit stop to the lavatory on a flight last week from Chicago to Santa Ana, California. I buckled my seatbelt and eagerly reached for my headphones. I was excited to watch the last half hour of The Girl in the Spider’s Web, a movie that got pretty awful reviews but that I found surprisingly entertaining.
Just as I raised my headphones…“Are you going home to Orange County or just visiting?” This from the older woman sitting to my left, spoken with a clear Irish lilt. Great. Just as I was about to get back into my thriller, I get this.
Now I’m a fairly gregarious, extroverted guy, but I’ve always hated airplane small talk. For me the routine has always been put bag in overhead bin, sit in seat, fasten seat belt, put on headphones, grab book, tune out world, land, leave plane.
I’d helped my seatmate earlier in the flight with raising and lowering her tray table and had gotten the feeling that she may have wanted to chat, but had successfully warded off any attempts at engagement.
I responded, “I’m headed home. How about yourself?” She said she was on her way home after visiting family in Chicago and Michigan.
We’d chatted no more than two or three minutes when the subject of her husband came up. “He died six months ago.” Two seconds later tears streamed down her cheeks. Without even thinking, I grabbed hold of her hand. Told her how sorry I was to hear this. “We were married for 44 years. He was such a kind man. And so good to me.”
My reaction to seeing Margaret break down in tears was a normal, human one. Only the coldest of the coldhearted would have said, “Yeah, sorry to hear that, but I’ve gotta get back to my movie now. Good luck!”
But something odd happened. It literally felt like a light went on inside me. Understanding this requires some brief background on my journey. Six and a half years ago, after my Hollywood writing career had circled the toilet for one too many years, I began a regular meditation practice. This led to exploring the entire spiritual arena and, recently, to my decision to leave Tinseltown to focus on spreading meditation to the hinterlands.
