Happiness is a Choice

I had an interesting view of humanity on my way home from my vacation on Saturday.  My flight home had a connection in Atlanta.  There were some fairly intense thunderstorms in the area.  About half an hour out from the airport we encountered extreme turbulence.  It was probably the worst I had ever experienced.  The gentlemen sitting on either side of me were quite kind.  They were extremely tolerant of the fact that I was talking loudly, non-stop, and extremely fast - I do this when I am nervous.  It seemed the worse the turbulence got, the more I was talking.  At one point I realized that I was even annoying myself, so I closed my eyes and went to my 'happy place.'   When we landed safely, I was EXTREMELY grateful to the pilot!!!

When I arrived at the gate where I was to make my connection, my peace and contentedness from landing safely was rudely intruded upon by one of the most nasty, negative, miserable people I have ever encountered in my life.  She was being pushed in a wheel chair by a meek looking man maybe 10 or 15 years her senior.  All she did was loudly demand that he do things for her and then scream at him, using extremely foul language, that he wasn't doing them correctly.  At first I thought there might be a mental issue because her behavior was so inappropriate, but I really don't think that was the case.  She was just a miserable human being.  Sitting there listening to her actually had the effect of making me feel physically ill.  Luckily, it was announced that our gate had changed.  I scooped up my things in record time and found a seat at the new gate where I hoped I would be away from most of the people - especially the obnoxious wheelchair lady.

Instead, a smallish Latin man of about 55-60 came and sat next to me.  He had a twinkle in his eyes and he was quick to smile.  He told me he had spent two weeks in Belize doing missionary work.  He found it amazing that even though the Belize people were so poor and had so very little, he had never encountered happier people in his life.  Shortly after this conversation it was announced that our plane was going to be delayed.  The wheel chair lady was out-of-control with anger and many other people, clearly dressed as if they were returning home from a vacation, were angry and out-of-sorts as well.  I found myself thinking of the contrast.  These people in the airport had everything they possibly needed, including really nice vacations, and they were miserable.  The poor people in Belize had nothing and chose to find pleasure and happiness in just being with each other and appreciating the things they had.

I continued watching the people around me as the plane was delayed repeatedly. (We ended up boarding the plane at the time we were supposed to have landed and had to sit in line for takeoff for an hour.)  It was amazing just how angry and nasty the other passengers were becoming.  In the meantime, my Latin friend and I sat telling jokes and funny stories about our lives.  Every time the plane was delayed, somehow we were laughing even harder.  We actually had a great time despite the fact that he was flying standby and was fairly certain he would be sleeping in the airport and I knew I needed to be at Logan to pick my daughter up from her trip to Hawaii at 7am and it didn't look like we'd be landing from our flight until 3:30am.  There was nothing we could do to control when the plane would take off.  The only thing we could control was how we dealt with it.  Most of the other people were extremely unhappy.  Me and my Latin friend (I never did get his name) had a wonderful, memorable, really fun time.

At one point in our conversation my friend said it was sad that the Belize people had such an unfortunate life.  As I looked around at all of the privileged people at the airport being absolutely nasty and miserable, I turned to my friend and countered, "Are you sure it is THEM that have the 'unfortunate life'?"