When You Don’t Know What the Future Holds

As I’m balancing my bag down through the plane aisle, I overhear a spectacled woman, with her own glorious halo of white hair, seated in 5D, turn to tell the bearded guy in a baseball cap beside her,  “Honestly, it’s just good to be vertical — because, at my age, you never know. You just don’t know what a day or the future holds.” Nothing’s a given —- and everything’s a gift. And don’t we know it, with all this old world whirling and all that the headlines keep barking, and as I’m passing them both, looking for 25A & empty overhead bin space, I hear him mutter to her, “Yeah, that’s for sure — nothing’s a given.”   And something fills some of the empty space in me & I stop in my tracks, mid-aisle, because isn’t that the reality: Nothing’s a given —- and everything’s a gift. That the sun rose and this morning we opened our eyes one more time when that might not have been our story at all. Air and hope miraculously expanded our lungs with real possibility. This very breath filling your lungs in this moment, this next heartbeat pulsing life-blood through your veins, this […]